Sand Child
by Desert.Moon
Summary: Sunako, a girl who controls neither the sand nor her temper very well, longs to see the desert again; but when she's finally given the chance, circumstances change her mind. Even so she and Gaara are forced to return home together—one of them newly-blind.
1. The Past

_I'm starting to hate the past._

_I'd thought that I'd managed to push it away, but recently, it's been pushing its way back. There will be a word, a phrase, that will remind me of something from long ago. Or sometimes a name, a name that brings back too many memories._

_One name in particular: Gaara._

-/-

My father's greatest skill in this world was infusing objects with his chakra. In fact, it was mostly his only skill, but he had many uses for it.

He tried to teach it to me, too. But his affinity was always for corporeal objects, _solid_ objects. I could never force chakra into my shuriken or strengthen a katana with my energy. I never really had any skill with weapons at all, to be honest.

There was only one thing I could pour my chakra into: Sand.

-/-

"Here, look," I said apprehensively, holding my hand out to the suspicious redheaded boy with eyes of palest seafoam. In my outstretched palm rested a small hill of sand, not golden, but crimson with my own blood. Mother always got nervous when I cut my finger open—I was only five, after all—but it was the easiest way to bind my chakra to a substance. I never did it in front of her, though.

But now was important, I thought. I needed to have control.

"Look," I said again in a small voice. "I'm sort of like you, just a little."

To prove my point, I stared hard at the pile of crimson. After a few seconds, it twisted into a tiny funnel of gold-flecked scarlet, a miniature sandstorm.

The five-year-old in front of me took just one step, wary. He was unsure of my intentions, uncertain of whether or not I was tormenting him.

I didn't blame him. I saw the way the other children treated this boy, _feared_ this boy.

I was a little scared myself, standing there. No, let's face it—I was terrified. My hand trembled violently as I tried to hold it in the air, and the tiny twister collapsed back into my palm.

But I had never seen any sign of the monster that was said to possess this child, so even though I was afraid, there I stood.

Hesitantly, I closed my nut brown eyes, wondering if it would soothe him at all that I couldn't see him. Again, I tried to raise the sand. It was harder with my eyes closed; I liked—needed, really—to be able to see it to concentrate.

A few bloody grains stirred feebly; I could feel them skid gently across the tops of the others. Then the whole conglomeration lifted into the air, and my eyes snapped open.

He stood close enough to touch my hand, if he just reached out, and my sand whirled around his body, dancing with _his_ sand. I let my arm fall; the few grains left in my palm tumbled to the stone of the rooftop.

I struggled to call them back to me, but though infused with my blood, the sand obeyed him much more naturally than me. The stray particles rose to join his waltzing storm.

I opened my mouth then, to say I-don't-know-what, but my mother's desperate call interrupted.

"Sunako! Sunako!"

I could tell by the tone of her voice and the way that she stumbled across the rooftop that something was wrong. My mother was a calm, graceful woman, and even a five-year-old could see that this was not a normal state.

It seemed that she was so blinded by tears that she didn't even see that boy who stood, frozen like a culprit caught in the act, in front of me. If she had, there would surely have been fear in her voice as well.

"Mommy?" I called anxiously. "Mommy, what's—"

"It's your father," she interrupted in a trembling whisper. "Sunako, it's daddy. He—he—" Her voice caught in her throat as she sank down beside me.

Gaara had slipped away. He was no fool.

"Mommy, please—"

It was as if she couldn't even hear me talking, the way she kept cutting me off. "Caught in a sandstorm," she breathed, choking on tears. "Unnatural. Sunako—daddy's not coming back."

_Sandstorm. Unnatural.__** Not coming back.**_

"Mommy—"

"Sunako, we're leaving. I can't stand this village now. I can't stand the desert. I hate this place. We'll go—we'll go to Konoha. Find the trees. There won't be this cursed barrenness." Her speech was disjointed, but I understood her words.

On the other hand, her reasons didn't make sense even to my childish mind. I was sharp; it made up a little for my lack of skill.

I knew she'd grown up in the desert. She didn't hate it; she was comfortable there. And it didn't make any sense to go into the open desert because she _couldn't_ stand home, even if it was just to get to Konoha. Open desert was what she should have hated.

Unless she was trying to find my father, to make him come back. I understood_that_, and I latched onto the reason.

I wasn't so sharp as to see what was more likely: She was simply trying to join him.

-/-

It only took my mother a day to get prepare. I suppose that was what told me she was _really_ ready to go; Mother knew the importance of being prepared in the desert. I remembered her rushing around, filling canteens and packing food and otherwise flitting about like a giant butterfly, then abruptly sitting down to examine another map.

But most of all, I remembered that I saw a child with crimson hair and eyes of palest seafoam, sheltered in the shadows of a building, watching us leave.

_Konoha_, I mouthed, but he just turned away.

-/-

A/N: Due to _The Obsession_'s bad habit of trying to take over my life, this fic is currently on break until Obsession is over, because I tried writing this one and failed. However, because I really want to see where I can go with this, I WILL CONTINUE AT SOME POINT. Rest assured, I will. It will almost definitely be the next thing I work on.

Cleverly, I put this note at the END of the chapter, so if you really liked it, you add it to your alerts and wait. MWAHAHAHA.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed the old one. :)


	2. Rage

**A/N:** Well. For all those who, with hope in their hearts, added this to their alerts, rejoice. :)

I'm not going to be working on it consistently, alas. I would like to, but I don't have a ton of ideas. **In fact, this chapter here was written almost entirely by my good and amazingly talented friend, Emi. **Unfortunately, she has apparently taken herself from the fanfiction world, claiming she will not write it anymore, removing a huge amount of talent from our lives and throwing me into despair. Thus, where this story was going to be a collaboration between us, I'll be continuing on my own. :(

Still. Since reading to-love-is-to-lie's _amazing_ fanfic _SecondGuess_, I've rather been in the mood to write one of my own. And since the next chapter of _Obsession _is in-transit, you might say…

Well. We can hope.

Also, I'm going to do something which, if you know my writing, is incredibly amazing for me. I'm going to _break canon_, and with no good explanation, either. That's right, ladies and gents. (Do any gents ever read this?) Gaara is fifteen and heading off to the Chûnin Exams to be murderous. Did the earlier exam never take place? Did it just not include Orochimaru's famous plot? Who knows. At this point, not me. XD

So without further ado, enjoy this beautiful chapter barely written by me. (I proofread it, and added my own parts here and there. XD) Don't look too eagerly for the next one, because I don't know when it's coming. (Although I have started it!)

(Holy smokes, it's possible that author's note is longer than the chapter… XDDD Btw, DISCLAIMER! I don't own Naruto, Gaara, etc. Psh. I sort of have a claim to Sunako… and the rest of them? THEY'RE MINE NOW. MWAHAHAHAHAH. *bricked*)

**-**/**-**

The rage set the chakra roiling, like tendrils of flame, hither-thither through my keirakukei. Had I grown any better what he'd taught me, I might have set the doorknob aglow with energy.

But I'd stopped trying to bring my father back long, long ago. I was so badly out of practice in the techniques he'd patiently sought to teach me that they weren't even worth mentioning. Just another way I've shamed him, I guess.

And a further one was the anger I felt towards my mother at any given time—ever.

But it was hard not to be infuriated by her high, wheedling voice that was more of a controlled screech than anything at all. I was coming into an age where my vista sharpened as the blur of innocence fell away, and nothing was harder than accepting the precarious world I lived in. Perhaps because I was being taught to kill, the desire to kill everything around me was never far from the surface of my conscious. In the pressure cooker of my still-developing mind, only the bare bones of lessons could be understood, and there's one thing that stood out in every single one I was gradually beginning to retain: _Killing and death, killing and death, train yourself to be the only one left…_

Nobody will hold my hand: I have to walk on my own feet, even if somebody slits the tendons of my ankles. This was a time of great confusion, not just in my body but in my mental realm as well—and because anger is the only thing that not eroded by tribulation, I was brimming over with it.

_They took my parents from me._

That would have been so easy to use as an outlet for my fury. _They took my parents. _That left revenge. But who was they? A sandstorm. A natural disaster that killed one parent and took the other almost as thoroughly.

So at that moment, my anger was directed less at the unfairness of my situation and more towards the overweight woman oozing across a mismatched pile of moth-eaten cushions. In fact, it was more the exhaustive smile on her face that I hated so. (I didn't have to turn around to know that it was there; it always was.)

With idiot inanity, the woman gazed lovingly at the back of her daughter's head, as though nothing outside the walls of the house went wrong—as though I were still a child, and love had replaced the entire existence of hatred.

"Where are you going, swee-tie?"

I flexed the muscles in my hands, which were already aching crazily from clenching the doorknob. She always said it that way, with a near glottal stop after 'swee.' It nearly drove me crazy, but I never said as much.

Because my mother had already taken that drive.

"I'm going to training with the rest of my team," I stated, not turning around. "Just like I do every day."

"Ah, my little girl's already so big! Tell me it hasn't been so long since you graduated the Academy…"

"It's been three years, Mom."

I remember exactly how many years, months, and days it had been since that very ceremony. It had been the last time my mother had left the house, and some memories were worth savoring.

Sometimes, they were all you had left.

That accursed smile grew even wider; if I hadn't known any better, and hadn't loved that woman for some strange reason, I'd probably have taken it upon myself to wipe it right off that decrepit hag's mug.  
I may have called her 'Mom,' but that lump of collective chain-smoking and chocolate-bingeing was no mother of mine. I had lost her a long time ago—lost her in the desert sands between Suna and Konoha, shortly after a platoon of Sand-nin had disappeared into the funnel of a sandstorm.

"…Mmmm," Anego said, her ever-sagging mouth jerking further up at the corners. "Well, you go off then, honey. Your father would be so proud of the kunoichi you're becoming…"

The hope in her eyes was something I couldn't bring myself to crush—no matter how angry I got at her. There was so much knowing in them, and yet she managed to know nothing at all about the world outside these (relatively) safe four walls.

That was easy, I suppose, if you never set foot outside of them.

"Pick me up some cigarettes on your way home. And, Sunako?"

I perked slightly. She didn't use my name too much, just her irritating endearments.

"I love you, Sunako. I love you more than life, my precious girl. Do you know that?"

I think I blinked a few times at the bare wooden door in front of me before closing my eyes tightly.

"Yes, Mom," I said, and gave the sweaty knob in my hand a turn. The mellow warmth of summer encompassed me suddenly, so different against my skin than the iced-over insanity that permeated our home.

_I used to know._

-/-

The fronds gave a whisper, a mere whisper, and she knew. Not a half an instant and the charcoal-haired girl's hands were recoiling to her sides, fingers splayed and receiving the ends of kunai. They spun madly once, twice, in her hands, and then zoomed towards the disturbance. I didn't feel the tip of the knife slit my sleeve and draw a thin, bleeding line across my arm—that's how fast they flew, like quicksilver bullets into the all-encompassing forest.

That forest seems perpetually trying to swallow me.

Konan Eiji is everything I can never hope to be. She's also my best friend, even when we're on the training field. I was lucky to have her on my team, since, of course, the standard squad was two boys and one girl, but she got nervous when the guys outnumbered the girls. A disadvantage in battle, but the Academy had taken pity on her… for now.

"Daaaaamn…" came her husky voice as she rearranged herself, fisting a hand against her hip and flipping the thick hair into her eyes. (She liked it covering one side of her face, and in the back it fell past her shoulder blades in a night-colored curtain. Eiji has beautiful hair, and even though she never takes care of it, it's always beautiful.)

"I thought for sure you were Raiyo-kun, trying to sneak up on me again. That boy just never learns, I swear…"

"Eating kunai knives is a lesson most people usually retain," I said, grinning. "Raiyo's just stupid."

No, it wasn't just small talk: Raiyo was an idiot, any way you looked at it. If he made it to Chûnin, it'd be a miracle. No—that he'd made it to Genin was a miracle. It wasn't that Raiyo lacked that crucial ability to age twenty years on a mission and can his boyishness; frankly, he was a no-talent. I guess he'd learned it from the best, though. He'd die early, and making fun of it eased the pain we knew we'd feel when he did.

Let me explain quickly: We are Cell 14, made up of me, Izari Sunako, as well as Konan Eiji and Shueshi Raiyo. Eiji is a tried-and-true kunoichi with a talent for using a wooden bouken (and kunai, as you've seen). Raiyo… Well, you also read about that. We just keep him around for comic relief. And me… I'm trailing along somewhere behind Eiji in the skills area, still moving my sand and still craving the desert.

Still harboring latent fury.

Our Sensei is another story, and that's what we speak of next.

"So, what's the plan for today?"

"Aruno-sensei says he's taking us on another mission."

"Let me guess…"

"Yep. Your favorite rank."

"URRGH!" I shrieked, shutting my eyes and tilting my head backwards. "HOW are we supposed to become decent Shinobi when all we do is shovel dog crap or pull somebody's weeds!"

"It gets better," Eiji said, her knife-blade smile stretching. "He's got an _announcement to make_, which I already found out about. What event's coming up that everyone's all in a tizzy about?"

I love that about her: She never discloses information or tells me anything straight. She's subtle and so in every way a ninja that I can hardly stand it. She hardly ever expresses anything besides her usual, cool attitude or condescension, and she doesn't worry about anything relating to her physical appearance. I'd give my left arm to be able to swallow emotions the way she does.

"Chûnin exams?"

"Yep."

"No," I said, shaking my head slowly.

"Yep," she just answered back.

"…Hold my hair back while I throw up. Is he NUTS?"

"I mean, really… Keeping us on D-ranked missions isn't teaching us anything, especially if he's going to ship us off to the Chûnin Exams in two weeks. It's just poor strategy," Eiji noted calmly, sliding her thumb nail between her front teeth. It's her only bad habit, and she does it when she's thinking. "We've hardly seen a C-rank, and it's been almost three years."

I didn't know what to say; I was still stunned that Aruno-sensei would do something so… so non-clingy. It's not that he values or appreciates us, or that he's enough of a shinobi to even handle himself let alone three Genin, but his stupidity surprised me this time. It's not like we're too inexperienced for those kinds of missions—hell, we could take a B-rank if we were offered one—but Aruno-sensei is holding us back. It just further stifles my unpracticed abilities, and remembering it just irritated the less-than-optimistic disposition I'd left the house with.

"Oh, and speak of the devil—"

I was wishing Eiji would pull out her kunai again, because here he came in all his glory just then, flouncing through the shrubbery and grinning, as usual, like a madman. A rather disenchanted-looking Raiyo was being dragged along by the elbow behind him. Yes, here he was: Naoto Aruno, my squad's 'captain.'

"Gooood morning, girls!" he piped, and I felt some of that rage that I'd been letting simmer since the morning's conversation with my mother bubble back up. Yuck, I remember thinking.

"Shalom," Eiji greeted, gazing dispassionately at the pair.

Of course, Raiyo perked up the minute he saw Eiji. He's been madly in love with her since antiquity, and although he has sense enough not to openly show it, we girls have a way of knowing these things. Eiji's never said anything substantial about the subject, or given any indication that she even cares about the whole thing. So Raiyo's love remains unrequited, and something to laugh at when I'm about to lose my mind.

Aruno-sensei was still smiling (like always) as he shoved forward a stack of forms, stapled together and labeled at the tops in faded blue mimeograph, "KONAN EIJI" and "IZARI SUNAKO."

"These are your permission slips for the Chûnin Exams coming up. Aren't you excited? I know I am!"

Sheesh. What kind of Jōnin shows outward emotions? I averted my gaze to the lovestruck Raiyo and took my papers wordlessly. Eiji reverently folded them in her hands and gave them a once-over, having not even looked over at our male teammate.

"Risking our lives and dragging Raiyo along for a five-day cut-throat vacation… Yeah, sounds like a regular carnival," my friend murmured, still browsing the first few indistinct lines of print.

"Now, now—cheer up, you! I have every confidence that you're going to mop the floor with this test as one cell! You can become everything you want to be, Eiji, only if you try!"

_If at first you don't succeed…_

And that was the first time I looked into my sensei's ever-grinning face and saw something that looked just the same as when I looked into my mother's. Something profoundly missing, and something in those teal eyes that made them seem a thin curtain, hardly disguising the mass of shattered sanity behind it. I saw that voice as faintly masking the caws of inner demons, and his façade of cheerfulness for what it really was—a façade.

It was the first time I ever wondered if, instead of him guiding us, we were his students so that we could guide him to something,

But I was blind as to what it was—and so was Raiyo. That left Eiji, and she probably had figured this all out ages ago. If I had to grasp a hand in any darkness, it would be hers.

And nobody would want _me_ to guide them through their blindness.

-/-

"Otouto-chan…"

The breezes screaming over the balcony were whispering of hell, and although Temari wasn't scared of much, this nighttime stinking of Halloween really gave her the spooks. How he stood it, she wouldn't ever know—

Oh, wait. She did.

He was so still she wondered if the gusts had carried her voice away, and she called again, louder this time, but still soft and fearful, like a kitten's mew.

"Otouto-chan… You should come in. It's getting cold out."

Gripping the opening edges of her yukata, Temari narrowed her eyes. Only further silence greeted her, until at last he stood and moved past her—so slowly it was almost arcane, and yet so quickly that she nearly gasped aloud. It was all she could do most of the time to not sense the bloodlust, even if she could control her reactions when others were watching.

At their hermitage of a home, she was just Gaara's sister—and he was just a lonely shell of something waiting to be, making eyes with his personal demons and the conflicting information everyone he'd ever cared about had dealt him.

Down the hall he slumped, not to sleep or to watch the dunes any longer. Temari shut the sliding door and stalked down the hall in padded socks back to her own room. Gaara listened to her go, until the rustlings of her futon ceased and only easy breaths filled the sandstone home.

It was a light sandstorm outside, but inside of Gaara's head, it was a full-on desert hurricane. And something had lead him to watch the swirls of silt outside, to lie in wait for something he could feel desperately wanted to return to his desolate land.

He was thinking of, long ago, a little girl who had been able to move sand like him—or almost like him, not as well. And how many people would die by his hand at the approaching Chûnin Exams.

**-**/**-**

**A/N:** Also! Contest. :) http:/ameko-shadowsong(dot)deviantart(dot)com/journal/22063061/


	3. Slipping

**A/N:** Two chapters in one day! A miracle!

…But don't get used to it. XDDDD I dunno when I'll be posting the next one. It might be months.

But I hope not. :D

-/-

I was still hiding behind my door that morning, wishing I could escape my room through a window or something. But while I _had_ so casually just called it my room, it was first and foremost a closet, and that meant no windows. Hell, that meant no _space_; I got a futon on the floor in there, and that was it.

I hated it, too. Home was, ridiculously, still the desert, and there was no such thing as _confined_ in the open dunes. Back _home¸_ I could have run forever and never looked back; and stretching out my arms would reach only empty space, not damp, splintery wall. Damn wood. I still wanted stone.

But my choices consisted of the damn closet or listening to my mother's quiet, whimpering snores all night, and feeling her smiling eyes on me when she woke up at odd hours. I chose hard floor and futon over moth-eaten cushions.

And, well, the fact that I still thought of Suna as home was as idiotic as Raiyo. Ten long years in Konoha had wiped out nearly every memory of sand and stone that five _short _years had left me. All I still had bouncing around my head was a red-haired boy and a sense of openness.

Maybe that was enough. But, damn, a five-year-old kid isn't supposed to remember all that at fifteen. Those things were supposed to fade.

Sighing, I fumbled in the dark for myhitai-ate, not bothering to yank on the grungy lightbulb. In a room—excuse me, closet—this small, I knew where everything was, anyway. I practically slept on top of my clothes.

For a minute more, I sat cross-legged, staring through the darkness at the Konoha symbol on its metal plate. Ten damn years I'd lived here, and I still couldn't figure out if they'd given me the right headband. I'd wondered since the day they handed it to me while my mother beamed proudly—and not-quite-sickeningly, not yet—across the crowds at Graduation.

Yeah, some memories were worth keeping. And something tainted every damn one of them.

Finally, I tied the damn thing around my head, knotting it under my sandy-pale ponytail, and pushed open the door. Light filtered in, half-heartedly illuminating that only decorations I'd given the wooden walls of my room: twisting, writhing paths of my own sand, like red and gold snakes, imprinted in the oak. Maybe if I put more effort into it, I wouldn't have to use my own blood to move the stuff, but these looping garlands were the closest thing I'd had to practice in recent days.

Surprisingly, my mother still slept on her pile of oh-so-comfortable pillows. Briefly, I worried that she might have discovered sleeping pills as well as the caffeine in chocolate; having a mother addicted to both staying awake and never waking up was something I could not afford, either emotionally or financially. D-Rank missions did _not_ pay a hell of a lot, and I was already funding her cigarettes.

The cigarettes I had conveniently forgotten to pick up yesterday, although she'd forgiven me with a hundred oozing endearments. 'It's ok, swee-tie, just get them tomorrow, pre-cious.' I didn't want to, and I knew if I didn't, she'd never get them herself; she barely moved from her spot all day and night. (I was still at a loss as to how she wasn't bored out of her damn mind—oh, wait.)

But I also knew that I would get them anyway, eventually. Not because she was my mother, as much as I hated to admit it, but because I was a shinobi. And shinobi followed orders unquestioningly.

Casting a last glance back at the sleeping mound of flesh—more than likely, she'd just been up late last night, later than Cell 14 on its damn D-Rank mission, waiting for her precious daughter to come home—I fled my stiflingly cold and cramped 'home' before she could wake up.

-/-

Maybe it was my name, I reflected moodily—and not for the first time—as I headed so enthusiastically for the training field. Sunako. Child of Sand. Child of _Suna_. No wonder I couldn't leave the place I barely remembered. Damn Mom and her sentiment. It was the only bit of love for her old home that she still clung to, as far as I can tell. But then, who knew what roiled around behind her puppy-dog, half-lidded eyes?

I responded to several greetings from my fellow genin with little more than sullen nods. As far as I could tell—and three years had made it clear—Uzumaki Naruto was now friends with just about everyone, but I couldn't bring myself to bond with him—or any other genin here, aside from Eiji… and Raiyo, to an extent. It was like I was leaving that part of me open, so I wouldn't have to rip bits out of it when it was time to go home.

This time, when Eiji and the field came into sight, I didn't attempt a sneak-attack approach. My arm still smarted from the day before; Raiyo's vague and useless healing ability hadn't accomplished more than almost pulling the skin back together. I'd have a scar—but then, that was nothing new. What shinobi didn't sport at least half a dozen by the time they were chūnin?

Besides, Raiyo and Aruno-sensei had already joined Eiji; today, they were just waiting on me. I'd spent too long hiding from my mother, I guess. Heh. Almost five years hiding from my mother—once I'd figured out where she'd gone.

"Don't say 'D-Rank,'" I ordered Eiji as I got close, pretending almost as skillfully as she that we were the only two there. Unfortunately, Aruno-sensei didn't join in the act.

"Not today, girls and boys! You've got a C-Rank, just for you! As practice for the Exams!"

Because a C-Rank mission was just _so _emblematic of the trials of the Chūnin Exams. I wished he wouldn't abuse his exclamation points so. His excitement bordered on as infuriating as my mother's smothering 'love.' My hand twitched. If Eiji had been any less controlled, her eye might have.

"We're not even leaving the damn country," I muttered, yanking open the mission scroll he tossed me. Eiji pursed her lips as she did the same. "Does this even _count _as C-Rank?"

"Standards are slipping," Eiji murmured with a hint of a smile. I glanced at Raiyo, and had to give him credit. He may have been an idiot, but he kept this thoughts to himself behind a wide-eyed mask. Couldn't think for himself, but as long as the orders he was given didn't lead him into a trap… As long as whoever gave those orders knew who they were dealing with and didn't try to get him to be too useful.

I didn't really get my hopes up.

-/-

The mission took all of an hour, escorting a poor dye merchant (apparently, his colors were the ugliest damn shades on the face of this earth, and when Raiyo managed to spill some on his clothes, I had to agree) to a nearby non-shinobi village. He was a twitchy, twittering thing, like an abused bird who still thought he was strong enough to fly.

With the amount of action we saw, I figured a D-Rank would have been more exciting, but at least we got out of the village for a while. We were back just in time to head over and turn in our _permission slips_—who were we supposed to be getting permission from, our parents? Did Aruno-sensei think we were as young as my mother did?—at the Academy building. Our sensei couldn't bring himself to let us do it on our own, apparently; he accompanied us.

I considered stabbing myself in the eye in utter mortification. As an alternative, I considered stabbing _him_ through the eye, but that was a damn good way to get myself in a hell of a lot of trouble. I just didn't want to be blind. If I were blind, returning to Suna one day would be pointless; I wouldn't be able to look at the wide open desert and the redheaded boy. If I were only blind in one eye, I still wouldn't be able to see them both at once. (And besides, there was no guarantee that I'd be able to find a hand to pull me out. I wasn't afraid of the dark, just afraid of the shroud.)

The best thing about learning to hide my emotions, I decided as we walked through snickers at our inability to hand in our entry forms without our sensei, was that I could hold my head high and beat those morons to a bloody pulp without them being any the wiser.

Besides, I told myself firmly, biting down on my lip—seeing as my anger didn't bleed so easily, nor was it so easily cowed—they'd see when the tests started. We were two years older than most of them. (And the older genin, the ones who'd taken it before, offered nods instead, most of them. Like us, they'd been shinobi long enough to grow up. It helped that most of them had met Sensei, too; some of them had scraped away the opacity of his mask long before I had.)

As Eiji crossed her arms and looked cool, and Raiyo trailed along looking meek, Aruno-sensei beamed at every young ninja around us as if they bore us no derision whatsoever. I wasn't sure if he was naïve or just blind—or, remembering the glimpse I had seen, merely hiding.

Maybe he was a better shinobi than I thought.

-/-

This place was a mess.

I massaged my temples as the third guy—actually, this one might have been a girl, which was frankly a little disturbing, although the more disturbing part may have been that I couldn't actually tell—hit on Eiji next to me. She gave him/her the same cool glance she'd flashed the last two, and turned her back on the shinobi from a foreign village, also leaving Raiyo facing her discouraging body language.

"Don't turn your back on the enemy," I muttered, half to myself, glancing up at her without raising my head.

"Hun, the only possible way to avoid that right now is to stand with our backs to the wall, and all the wall-space is taken." She grinned at me, and I returned the expression, warmed by the 'our.' Sure, I didn't try too hard to make friends to leave that empty space ready for home, but I still loved the ones I had. And it was nice to know there wasn't anything reprimanding in her statement; she was just teasing.

I leaned back against one of the many long tables—I was guessing there would be writing involved in this test—and glanced over at Raiyo, who really had been saying even less than usual in the past few days. With a hint of worry, I wondered if his lovesickness had swollen up into his throat, masquerading as a toad nesting in his vocal cords.

My concern didn't last long, though; only until the flash of red hair danced through my peripheral vision, a little wave of greeting. My head snapped around so fast my neck threatened to quit on me, but it was only a random Kumo-nin, not the redhead from the day I left Suna.

It could have been, though. Hell, it was likely. He was probably here.

And suddenly, I was afraid.

It was easy, so easy, to miss him from afar, the boy I'd never had a chance to be friends with. He hadn't hurt me on the day I'd shown him my tenuous control over his element, proving he'd had the potential to distance himself from the label he'd been given. But that was ten years ago, and I had no way of knowing what he'd been up to since then.

Hell, I wasn't sure I _wanted_ to. I'd been scared of him at age five, and suddenly, that fear was one more memory, one more _overpowering _memory, that I had of home.

Oh, hell. What was I going to do if he was here?


	4. Tough Competition

**A/N: **My Christmas/etc. present to those of you who wanted it. :D Happy holidays.

-/-

A tendril of sand wound its way up out of the pouch at my waist, as it did when I was nervous. It was the only time I didn't need to concentrate—or slit my on wrists—on the damn stuff to get it moving. Eiji, taking notice (and she hadn't missed my speedy head-turn, either), slid her arm around my shoulder and leaned over.

"What's up, hun?" she whispered.

"Tough competition," I said stiffly, keeping my eyes straight ahead and refusing to let them search for a redheaded teenager with seafoam eyes. On second thought, I decided I was less likely to see him if I was looking at Eiji, and turned my gaze on her.

Half a grin curled up her face. I was a useless liar; I just couldn't bring myself to like it. Eiji wasn't fond of it either, but at least when she had to, it slid out smoothly. I was the one who could see when other people lied to me, though, even when it was less obvious.

"Wanna try again?"

I sighed. "Raiyo hasn't been talking much."

"Who cares?" Eiji's voice went cold; behind her, I saw a little light go out of his eyes. "It's better he keeps those words locked up inside him, ne? Less irritating that way."

Whatever reply I (never really) had died on my lips at the appearance of our proctors. Distracted from my apprehension, the lazy drifting of sand collapsed onto the table; I swept it into my cupped hand and dumped it back into my pouch, not feeling like moving it there mentally. I was too preoccupied with trying to find an answer for both the disregard in Eiji's face and the something-else-entirely in the wells of her pale blue eyes.

The proctors organized us into rows, explaining the exam. It occurred to me very suddenly that, in the midst of my own damn anxieties, I'd forgotten Eiji's: There were a hell of a lot more male shinobi here than female. Swearing under my breath, I twisted around to locate her; she was hunched between two guys, eyes narrow and wary and decidedly uncomfortable, though she hid it relatively well. To show my undying support, I flashed her a grin; she returned a strained smile. I seriously considered standing up and kicking one of the guys out of his seat, but I thought the changing of assigned seats would be frowned upon, damn it.

Frowning darkly, I faced forward. So, a written test. Damn, I was bored already—but then, after three years with Aruno-sensei, I should have been used to that. The only way to get a fight was to pick one with a younger, stupider genin. Or to challenge an older one with enough pride, if you were feeling lucky.

Still, a written test. Not so bad. I'd probably do alright. If worst came to worst, I could cheat. Cheating ranked right up there with telling lies—although, while I'd never had the opportunity to cheat before, it seemed like it would be a damn sight easier than lying. You didn't have to talk until you got caught.

My pencil tapped on the table as I looked over the questions I'd been given. Not a secret message to Eiji, though I wished it could be. We'd both probably get half of these. Too bad we couldn't share; with luck, we'd have opposite halves. Raiyo might get one. Maybe two—I remembered teaching him _that_ one myself.

Tap, tap. I just needed to be glad Aruno-sensei wasn't allowed in, or he'd be giving us the damn answers himself. Hell, he'd do it at the top of his damn lungs, too, with pride, like he was helping us. Tap, tap. I was starting to get the occasional dirty look now as I searched for hints to this puzzling and unknown problems in the words of the proctors.

Red hair, like a poisonous butterfly—no, the same Kumo-nin as before. Damn. I needed to stop jumping at shadows.

"Time's up, boys and girls," announced the proctor, condescension lacing his voice. I looked up in shock. What? I had half a problem done—no, a problem and a half, I'd managed to get that one I'd taught Raiyo fairly quickly.

"Now you're sharing answers, children." If I hadn't been so heartened by the words, I might have stabbed him for the last. Children. Hah. We hadn't been children since the Academy—or before. Hell, not since we learned the word _kill, _at least_._

But this meant I could skip over to Eiji and ease her suffering and steal answers while she smirked at me for having so few. How I loved that girl.

Oh, but—"You may get _one _answer from a teammate, and _one_ from another genin of your village. The rest have to be from other villages' shinobi, girls and boys."

Damn. I could practically hear Aruno-sensei—_this is a lesson in teamwork and cooperation and assessment _and blah blah blah. Well, fine. I'd just avoid everyone with a Suna headband.

Although I sure as hell couldn't have told you why.

-/-

Two hours later, I was standing in front of 'The Forest of Death' without a clue as to what the hell the 'gimmick' of that test had been.

Several teams had been eliminated for cheating—getting more than one answer from their own squadmates or villages—but that can't have been the whole point, to see who could follow orders and cooperate? Eiji had already figured it out, I was sure. Hell, maybe it was just an ordinary test. Maybe they were going to grade us for real. Damn. That _would_ be unexpected.

For the third time, I jumped at a flicker of red in my peripheral vision. This time, it wasn't the shinobi from Kumo, but a girl from Amegakure whose hair was more orange than red anyway. I ground my teeth in frustration.

Eiji folded her arms and stared me down.

"Alright, Sunako, what's up? You look like some damn lazy frogs crawled in your sandals."

I snorted and started to say something dismissive when it occurred to me to wonder why the hell I was trying to lie to her. Not only was I going to fail miserably, as I always did when attempting such a thing, I had nothing to hide. Everyone here knew I'd come from Suna—and as far as I knew, no one here gave a damn. Konoha and Suna were allies.

"Someone from back home," I admitted. "I keep thinking I've seen him, and it's getting on my damn nerves."

"Me, too, your jumping is driving me up a wall, girl." She grinned, showing she was kidding—and it applied to her next statement as well. "A guy, huh? From so long ago. I smell the luuuuurve."

I cast her a reproachful look, half-snickering and trying my damndest not to. "We were five, Eiji."

"True love lasts forever!"

"You sound like Aruno-sensei," I shuddered. "No, trust me, Gaara sure as hell wasn't the type for any kind of love—not from what I heard."

"Alright. Tell me what he looks like; I'll keep an eye out for him."

"Hell no," I said. "I don't _want _to find him. I wish _I _didn't know what he looked like."

Our tones were light, but Eiji saw the fear in my brown eyes, and hers deep down were solemn blue. She pulled me close in a one-armed hug.

"Don't worry, hun, I'll protect you from that big nasty ninja."

"Deal," I said. "And I'll protect you from every other shinobi here, not to mention anything else we meet in the _Forest of Death._" With the final phrase, I widened my eyes and lowered my voice. We both snickered.

Glancing over my shoulder at Raiyo, I was suddenly damn sure I knew why he wasn't talking. Our bond sure as hell would've been hard to break—hard even to slip in edgewise.

A couple of genin got into a scuffle a few feet away; sighing, I turned to eye them. They were just throwing punches, no jutsus or anything, but at least it was something to take my mind off Gaara…

A _thunk_ and a whimper of pain from just behind me had me spinning. I found myself face-to-face with Raiyo's hand—which had a kunai embedded in it. He had stopped the damn thing from burrowing into my brain, but he hadn't caught it as Eiji would have… he had tried.

Wordlessly, I glanced past him to see another couple of brawling genin, obviously bored as hell with this damn waiting. It was their stray kunai that had almost killed me. Looking back at Raiyo as he lowered his hand, tugged out the weapon, and tried to heal over the skin with a bit of chakra. He ended up expending a damn sight more than he meant to and not even fully healing it. Biting his lip, he gave up, wiping the _gifted _kunai off on his just-past-knee-length pants and shoving it in his holster.

Looking sideways at Eiji, who was gazing scornfully at her teammate, I dug some bandages out of my own kunai holster and wrapped Raiyo's sluggishly-bleeding hand.

"Thank you," I said, voice still shaking with a touch of shock. He took his hand back and mumbled something—his own thanks or a 'you're welcome,' I couldn't tell—and I felt a wash of relief. So he could still speak. Even if Eiji was getting crueler. And when he turned his face to her with some hope of—what, congratulations? Gratitude?—she let her expression go blank and turned her face away.

Ignorance is always the silence that hurts the most.

But I knew why she was doing it… I thought. She had to stop him. He damn well knew shinobi couldn't be in love or they'd get themselves killed.

Somehow, I didn't think it was helping.

-/-

The damn proctor, a man with scarred and lumpy arms but a smooth face, finally showed up and told us our task. _Risking our lives and dragging Raiyo along for a five-day cut-throat vacation,_ Eiji had said; it figured she'd found out long before the rest of us.

"Each squad receives one, count them, one scroll," announced the proctor in a booming voice that nearly made me jump out of my skin. I scowled. "On this one, singular scroll is a map, and that map is the path you must, I repeat, _must_ take to the tower at the center of the Forest. Some maps have quicker routes than others—and they all, _all_ intersect with at least one other team's path at some point. With a little bit of luck"—he chuckled—"or skill or timing, you might, just _might_ meet someone with a shorter route. It's up to you, and only you, to determine this. Anyone who strays from their map's path or remains inside the Forest after five, after the fifth day, will be disqualified."

He paused. "And, yes, children, it _is_ a race." Then he went off about some damn release forms. Hah. We were ninja. And there he went, another damn adult calling us children. Did any of them have any common sense?

This task was stilted slightly in the older genin's favor, I could tell. Or at least, the ones who had taken it before; we were older, but not counted in that number of favored. They knew the forest probably a tad better, and could make decisions better about which route was shortest.

Oh, hell, who cared? We'd go fast. I sure as hell wasn't going to let some twelve-year-old just out of the Academy take my place as a chūnin.

The three of us started forward to receive our scrolls—and release forms—and our course intersected rather abruptly with another squad going in the same direction. I stopped short in an attempt not to collide with anyone—and stumbled back very abruptly when I saw blood red hair and seafoam eyes.

I clamped down on my chakra, refusing to let the blood-soaked sand respond to my sudden, inexplicable fear. Maybe his eyes did it; they slid slightly toward me—and a few grains quavered into the air, unbidden, as my concentration slipped—and sent panic shuddering through me. I didn't know why—expect that they were so… so hard, so icy, diamond-hard.

Eiji grabbed my wrist, her grip tighter than her lightly-spoken words expressed. "Is that the one?" she murmured, grinning slightly, making up things to calm me down with a smile. "With the brown hair and that fine face paint? Hm, love, the summer heat just got hotter…."

"No," I said. And I thought, _Not the hot one. The cold one. The one with the cold, cold eyes and the skin pale as cold, cold snow._

-/-

The breezes stirred, bringing a wisp of cool air through this still, muggy summer, but he was accustomed to far more heat than this. Perhaps the shimmering humidity threatened sloth and sluggishness on his sand, but it had been a long time since his sand had _really _given him any trouble. It obeyed him as unfailingly as his terrified siblings—and a good deal more loyally. His waves of gold—the only riches _he _ever needed—didn't cast him frightened glances at every infraction.

Like Temari was doing now, as they nearly had a collision with a Konoha squad. The Leaf-nin let the Sand-nin go first, of course; everyone always get out of his way—except when they were home, and Kankuro couldn't always be bothered because he was less afraid, and Temari could see her littlest brother just a tiny bit more clearly in the dark.

But here, Gaara cast terror into them both. Certainty of the Konoha squad's approaching death radiated off the blonde like heat from a burn, but the redhead's sand never even twitched, not outwardly...

Inside his gourd, it roiled, a frenzy of gold and thirst for blood. _Her blood_—he'd tasted it before. He didn't recognize her, not at all, but her blood-soaked, chakra-saturated, little wisps of sand stirred a memory inside his twisted thoughts. A child's vow—to never visit Konoha. Not after their sand had danced together, and she had fled the desert with her mother.

It was her, yes. Yes, he knew who she was, and his emotionless eyes followed her for a moment before flicking back forward.

He wasn't a child anymore, not outwardly. And orders were orders, even for a demon.

-/-

**A/N: **I think I'm going to try and post this every other Friday, opposite of _Obsession… _Once I get back on schedule, that is. Plus, I'm probably losing my computer soon for… who knows how long… so if you don't see chapters, that's why. But I'm definitely continuing this now. :D


	5. Turn Around

**A/N: **Hope you all had a good New Year! This chapter was soooo hard to write. XD It's literally 11 PM on Thursday when I am finishing this. Even though I had ideas… I just couldn't do it. XDDD So that's my excuse if it sucks… Enjoy? :D

I'm reeeeally looking forward to the plot, so it should come around in a chapter or two. ;P See you in two weeks! Wish me luck on next week's finals! XD

-/-

The moment we stepped into that forest, the whole damn world exploded.

Trees shattered around the three of us, splinters as long as my arm piercing Raiyo's shoulder, Eiji's chest. I choked out a cry of distress as I was blown off course, eyes widening as the blood spilled over their limbs.

But then I noticed the little things. The shattered trees had no shadows, and the blood fell like an artist's paint, not _quite _like real life.

I'd never been really good with genjutsu—it was too damn much like lying—but like lying, I could see through it easily enough.

"Release!"

The carnage splintered apart as easily as the trees; drawing in a breath, I glanced around. Raiyo huddled on the ground and Eiji struggled to stand, eyes glazed over. And two Kusa-nin closed around her, obviously intent on the damn scroll clutched in her hand.

Oh hell.

Two kunai whipped along their pointy way toward said Kusa-nin's heads. One slid across the boy's cheek; the other just cut through the girl's dark green sleeve. Both spun, but my next blade wasn't aimed for them. Instead, I drove it into my own palm, swearing minorly at the familiar pain and slicing along the old scar. Hand sufficiently coated in my own blood, I dug it into the pouch hanging at my waist, closing crimson fingers around a slippery handful of sand.

For a moment, the damn stuff resisted me, until it was swathed in scarlet and chakra. Inhaling sharply, I pulled my hand back out and flung the sand into the air.

It drifted gently downward… and then shot toward the enemy shinobi like driving golden rain.

My aim was terrible.

Swearing again, I redirected the attack, but enough of the tiny grains had penetrated Kusa-nin skin that they had started to retreat, hands flying into seals. My words grew more and more colorful as I darted forward, struggling to draw sand from the ground as well; I tripped over Raiyo, let out a particularly vehement "Damn it!", and twisted around to release the genjutsu still holding him in thrall. He blinked dazedly up at me, apparently amazed I was still alive.

"Get the hell up and help me!" I shouted, scrambling to my feet and dodging to the side as the grass beneath me decided to grow teeth. Very sharp teeth.

I lurched forward, un-bloodied hand outstretched, and gasped Eiji's release as my fingertips brushed against her shoulder. Her arm snapped out, bokken suddenly clasped in her fingers, hitting our female adversary solidly across the cheek. Suddenly, the damn grass stopped trying to eat us as she squeaked and stumbled back. The male ninja was already out of reach; he glanced over his shoulder to make sure his teammate was following, and then sprinted off into the trees.

Furious, I leapt forward, summoning my swirl of sand, but Raiyo reached out and snagged an edge of my clothing. I rounded on him with a snarl, and he cringed backwards.

"They're probably… luring us after them," he said quietly, shoulders hunched. "There were only two…"

"That's not what it looked like, damn it," I hissed, but struggled to relax my grip on the chakra in the sand. "They were running because of their injuries! And they—"

"Sunako," interjected Eiji, grinning wearily. "We don't need their map. If they wanted ours, their path must be _long, _girl. And besides, if you go that way, you'll get us disqualified. Love ya, hun, but not enough to let you go off-track."

I frowned at her, and then my shoulders sagged. I gathered my sand back to me and slid it back into the pouch, then turned to survey the trees we had yet to really venture into.

Raiyo might have no talent, but what the hell did that make me?

All I could do was throw things all the hell around and hope I hit something.

-/-

The trees grew wider around us and the shadows closed in as we finally left the dappled light at the forest's edge. The chain-link fence faded out of sight behind the massive trunks, so old and wise. A sense of claustrophobia tightened around my neck for one panicked moment, but damn it, I lived in a _closet. _After then years, I was used to it; the feeling passed.

Only to be replaced by another. I swear, I felt my heart quicken, my blood race through my veins. _This was real. _No more coddling from Aruno-sensei, no more begging uninterested genin for training battles. I mean, Hyūga Neji was a decent opponent—hell, _I _couldn't beat him in a fair fight—but he just wasn't concerned with fighting someone weaker than him.

Here, people went for those they thought were weaker. And if they thought that was us…

Well, we'd fended off one team already with no more injury than tiny little teeth-marks and images that would haunt us for the rest of our kami-damned lives.

"Hey," I said, struck by a sudden smirk. "Helluva show. Let's get it on the road."

-/-

Eiji hadn't stopped teasing me for the wrong turn I'd made (there'd been a fork on our map, and we were now headed down the longer road), and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why, because I knew for damn sure that it was Raiyo's fault. He knew it, too, but who was he to argue with Eiji?

Course it didn't bug me. She was too damn goodnatured about it. But it sure as hell confused me.

With a toss of the scroll, I switched to point, leading the group back to the fork; it looked quicker than following the longer path through. I glanced around, checking for the landmarks that were the only real indications of our route—no trails in the Forest of Death—and skidded to a halt. On the limb behind me, Eiji and Raiyo did the same to avoid colliding with me.

What a coincidence. Gaara's route intersected with ours.

Hell.

"Turn around, my friends, we're taking the longcut," I informed them. Eiji hopped forward to peer over my shoulder.

"Red hair… Your old boyfriend?"

I snorted. "Let it go, Eij. I knew him for one damn day when we were five." She grinned.

"Alright, alright, but why can't we go that way? Damn, he might even have a better map."

_Because I don't like his eyes. _Hell, I couldn't really tell them that. "He might," I agreed reluctantly.

With another wordless grin, Eiji handed the scroll back to me and took point. Damn, there was no arguing with her. Ever.

Then again, her cavalier attitude did calm my nerves a touch. Frowning, I leapt after her, casting Raiyo—who was looking back over his shoulder at me—a sour glance. The expression wasn't actually directed at him, but he probably took it that way, because he turned his face away.

"He controls sand, like m e," I called after my dark-haired friend. "But he's a hell of a lot better at it."

"I'll keep that in mind," she replied, face still shining with glee. She probably wouldn't. Hoping to somehow contain her, I lurched ahead to lead once more.

-/-

Gaara saw us coming, of course. He turned as we dropped like spiders to the ground; I flung up my arms in a futile attempt to protect us from the wave of rippling gold. My own sand took over, spraying upward in a thin shield; though Gaara's attack still shredded my arms, at least we were alive. I stumbled backwards, gritting my teeth against the pain, and Eiji skipped nimbly around me, bokken in hand. Arms trembling with pain, I struggled with bandages pulled from my waist pouch, tangling the white fabric as I tried to stop the blood flow. I'd have to wash out the sand later, I knew, as I watched my best friend take a step forward to her death.

Or—maybe I was overreacting. I didn't know how far Gaara would go. I swallowed and narrowed my eyes and prayed she was merely stepping toward fatal injury or incapacitation. She could come back from those.

But we didn't have to find out. Metal glinted in the edge of my vision, the only damn warning before a silver stinging storm whipped around the six of us like a whirlwind. Senbon—oh, hell, more enemies. Well, at least Gaara had half-turned, and his two teammates had pivoted, distracting them from us.

My hands twisted upward, dancing through a few seals—_monkey-horse-dog_—and I shoved chakra into the sand in my pouch. _One grain of sand could redirect the trajectory of the needle. _Hell, I didn't have aim like that—damn it, if I got out of this…

_Yes, practice, life and death a little more imminent. _Every single grain I had jumped into the air, whizzing side to side in a wild and uncontrolled ballet. I snarled and concentrated harder, wishing I could _stop, _and let the sand take over, but… Well, stopping thinking is damn hard.

Growling, I glared at the spinning senbon as if I could redirect them with my mind. I couldn't. My wildly whirling sand colliding with the razor tips of hundreds of needles—but there were at least a thousand. Senbon slid through skin as if it was air, and blood wept from wire-thin wounds on our faces and arms.

Two seconds later, each and every needle not embedded in flesh had thudded into the ground. I spun, turning my back on Gaara and his team to check for the newcomers, seeing that Raiyo had already darted off, leaving a trail of blood. I hoped he had a damn plan, but a gut feeling said he had run away. Damn it.

At least Eiji was still here, senbon sticking out of her bokken, eyes flashing. For half a second, I thought she'd found the needle-wielders, then I swear, she launched herself toward Gaara and his squad.

Well. He was distracted, I guess. Great time to snatch his scroll.

"EIJI!"

She glanced over her shoulder and grinned cheekily, then continued toward the redhead encased in a shell of gold. (Damn, did that make me want to practice even more—if I could figure out a way to carry the sand with me, because a really big gourd was _not _my style.) The blonde girl twisted around, giant fan dislodging senbon left and right and flinging them at Eiji, who hopped nimbly to the side, responding with a deluge of shuriken.

Swearing colorfully, I drew the sand back toward me and limped for the trees. Bright colors were flashing through the leaves, quick and flighty but a clear indication of someone's presence to the sharp eyes. Muttering darkly, I whispered further seals and promises of blood to the sand and fed it a bit of my remaining chakra.

Accepting my offering, it sprung back into the air and coiled towards the patches of color. Ninja trying to be stealthy shouldn't wear such vivid clothing.

A thin thorn of sand could have killed the attackers in an instant, and it was one of the few things I could make with just a handful of the dusty gold. But—Hell, I didn't want to kill anything.

I was mad, though. I put a needle through his eye. The sand dissolved before it hit his brain.

He feel forward, tearing leaves as he crashed through them, dragging someone behind and—oh hellhellhell. Gods above; I'd put out my own teammate's eye. Raiyo had been sneaking around to take out one of the senbon-attackers—Ame-nin—and that's who he clung to, the enemy shinobi's sleeve, taking her down with him.

"EIJI!" I screamed again, agony pulsing through my voice, and locked in a battle with Gaara's blonde teammate—the brunet, the one Eiji had jokingly referred to as _hot_, seemed to be off in the trees fighting another Ame-nin with a… mummy? Doll? Puppet?—she turned to answer my cry.

The fan's gust hit her side, blowing her back towards me. I swore, tears mingling with my words, and returned my gaze to Raiyo, because he was the one dying, and damn it, I loved Eiji, but she was going to get back up on her own.

In front of me, free of my will, my blood-soaked sand slit the Amegakure kunoichi's throat. I hardly noticed.

Having used most of my bandages after Gaara's attack, I began scrabbling in Raiyo's pouch. Bandages, bandages—damn, how the hell did you save someone when you'd stabbed them in the eye? He was going to bleed to death, damn it!

Folding up the mess of cloth, I pressed it against his bleeding socket. His other bright orb stared up at me, wide, unperturbed by my cascade of swearing—or maybe he was just going into shock. Damn it! Damn damn damn! He needed a medic—we needed to get ourselves disqualified so we could get back.

Eiji appeared at my side, bleeding from a bash on her head. She looked rather dizzy. I glanced back in time to see another Ame-nin leap from a massive tree branch and engage the blonde; Gaara, who had been watching the brunet's battle, sand roiling… twitched. And then a wave, a slavering golden monster of dust, rose into the air and killed both at once.

Eiji shifted her gaze just in time to see dark crimson spatter into the air; she grimaced, then turned back to me. "The hell happened to this idiot?"

"It was me," I muttered desperately, tempted to lift the bandages to see if they were helping. I resisted, instead pressing more against the wound. Raiyo's other eye was sliding closed. "Accident—we have to get him to a medic…."

"Yeah, let's—" She stopped, then crouched by the kunoichi's corpse and rifled around in pockets and pouches until she pulled out a scroll. Grinning triumphantly, she tugged it open.

"New map. Girl, we are half a day from the tower now. We'll help him there."

"Eij—"

Her eyes hardened. "Hun, I am not losing this test because of that boy. We can carry him there. It won't be any different from the rest of the time."


	6. Poison and Apologies

**A/N: **Hey, guys, sorry for the slightly late chapter. My best friend was over for a few days, and as I hadn't seen her in months…. Well, yeah. :) But here it is now—at quarter after one a.m. I stayed up late for you! :P

-/-

The tower was in sight but, damn it, carrying an injured teammate made us a hell of a target for other teams.

Raiyo had been able to stand on his own every once in a while from there to here, had occasionally carried his own wait, but the blood loss had gotten to him, and he was out. Eiji and I took turns carrying him piggyback, but that left _one _of us open to fight freely.

Against—well, against damn high odds, when several other ravening squads attacked at once.

I slid Raiyo to the ground in time to spin a shuriken through another kunoichi's throat, then twisted around to shove a kunai into her teammate's shoulder. I had no damn time to breathe, no time to even glance over my shoulder and see how many shinobi Eiji was beating up at once. Hands drenched one again in that hellish red substance, I spun around, practically crying with exhaustion.

Eiji, shoulders slumped, trudged over toward me and picked up Raiyo, carrying him bridal-style instead of piggyback. She was too damn tired to sling him over her shoulder, like me. It just took a hell of a lot more effort than either of us had left.

"Almost there," I whispered hoarsely. She nodded, and we limped, battered, toward the tower.

-/-

At least our maps had still gotten us there early, earlier than a lot of teams. At least we had a break, damn it, a time to rest—

And a medic for Raiyo.

"Look at it this way, hun," Eiji said wearily, wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth. We were both sitting on a wooden bench outside an infirmary. Inside, medic-nin worked to save Raiyo—although they'd never save his eye. "You saved him, girl. Seriously, they'll take him from the shinobi ranks—he'll never have to die."

I laughed weakly, bitterly. "Eiji, you still think he's gonna give up? Hell no. He was in those trees to save us. Damn it, Eij, he's gonna stick around. For both of us. And he's only more likely to get himself killed."

She shrugged; I glanced over to see her face. I couldn't read it. "Then it's his fault."

-/-

Finally, a medic opened the door and strode out. I couldn't tell from his face whether he had good news or bad news, and I sure as hell didn't get the chance to find out. Before he could speak, I convulsed, coughing, hot agony clawing its way up my legs and into my belly. Something warm spilled over my chin; I touched my fingers to my lips and them came away bloody. Strangely, the red was tinged almost a sickly green. It shone dully, and I wanted to puke.

"Sunako?"

I glanced at Eiji, but I had no control over speech. Something very heavy had attached itself to my tongue; my vision twisted violently, and then I hit the floor, pain shooting through my knees as they collided with the wood. Suddenly, I was staring dizzily up at the ceiling, which whorled like a whirlpool; and my limbs were numb, though I felt like I was moving.

Above me, the door opened again. I heard something…. Raiyo. Same as me. Convulsions. Thrashing was reopening our wounds; I could feel stitches splitting down my arm, as if to prove the medic's point.

It was very hard to think, but I tried. _Just Raiyo and me. _What hadn't happened to Eiji? _The grass. She was unconscious with the damn genjutsu, so the grass left her alone. _

The damn Kusa-nin had not only fed chakra into their thrice-damned grass until it came to life and gnawed on us, they damn well poisoned it, too.

After that, I closed my eyes and let the world go black and silent, because the spinning ceiling was making me sick.

-/-

Bruises dotted my arms, radiating a dull ache across most of my body, which hinted at more bruises under my clothes. The medic-nin I woke up to wore a white doctor's coat over a fishnet shirt and took the long hair thing too damn far: Pulled back in a silvery-blond tail, it reached all the way down his back.

"You'd better get up," he informed me, leaning against a counter with his arms crossed.

"What the hell happened?" I demanded, scowling.

"You were poisoned."

Oh, hell. Yeah, I remembered that now. "Raiyo?"

"He didn't want to get up, but I convinced him. I doubted two fine young ladies such as yourself and your black-haired teammate would want to be disqualified after you've come so far."

"Come—Hell, we're still in it?"

"You are if you get up now. The preliminary battles begin rather soon."

I groaned and muttered darkly, "Damn it, I just woke up."

"Then you better hope you don't get picked first." He grinned cheekily and pointed the way through the open door as I swung my feet off the white-sheeted bed.

-/-

I think Raiyo had had damn good reason not to want to get up. In fact, I didn't know what the hell kind of doctor that man was, because Raiyo sure as hell _should _have stayed in bed. He looked woozy and dizzy and it was damn indisputable that he couldn't walk a straight line.

At least Eiji was supporting him. He had an arm around her shoulder, and any other damn day, this might have been a state of bliss for him. Right now, he was too damn busy misjudging stairs and tripping over his own feet. No way in hell would he win a fight. No way in hell would he _survive _a fight.

"Raiyo," I said sharply. "If you get called, get the hell out of that fight, ok? Forfeit the match."

He turned his head to look at me, and I flinched away from the bandages crisscrossing his missing eye. Crimson still spattered the white cloth, as if red rain had dripped from the sky.

"I can't," he muttered. "Can't—"

"Raiyo, the damn Hokage just finished telling us that we're all on our lonesome from here. We are not working as a damn team anymore. So forget what that moronic doctor said and forfeit the match."

"Sunako…"

Snarling, I rounded on him and grabbed his shoulders, forcing the two of them to stop stumbling along. He winced. "Raiyo. _Forfeit the damn match."_

He avoided my eyes—a damn kindness actually, because I couldn't stand looking into his—and mumbled something that sure as hell wasn't satisfactory.

-/-

Thanks the desert gods, I did _not _go first. Neither did Raiyo.

Eiji did. Battered, bruised, and weary, she stood tall in the middle of the wooden room and faced Yamanaka Ino as if she'd been resting for five damn days.

She sure as hell hadn't.

Nonetheless, when the proctor said _Go_, kunai spun through Eiji's callused fingers like miniature storms. They zipped toward Yamanaka, who dodged with a practiced flip, like a cat sliding through the air. Eiji launched herself forward, bokken out to catch Ino's return barrage of shuriken as if a snake whipped back and forth instead of a piece of wood.

She stumbled as she landed, worn out by days of fending off enemy shinobi while subsisting on roots and berries. Ino's punch took her in the stomach, driving her upward slightly so that she sank back down to meet a side-kick to the center of her chest.

I watched with narrowed eyes and tried my damndest not to let myself pray.

Rubbing the spot, Eiji climbed cautiously back to her feet and snapped through the signs for a shadow doppelgänger. The duplicate hopped straight into the air, chakra sending it high; Ino watched it start to come back down (with no discernable purpose in mind; it wasn't doing anything), then gave a haughty grin and flung several more shuriken at Eiji, using the distraction as an opening to leap in.

Above, the clone (still falling) rained kunai down on the enemy. Ino jumped back, blades sticking haphazardly out of her shoulders, blood leaking down the side of her head. The doppelgänger twisted in order to gain momentum for a kick that Yamanaka easily blocked; and the real Eiji dropped to a crouch and swept Ino's feet out from under her with an outstretched leg.

Having devoured too much chakra already, the clone disappeared, and Eiji scrambled to kneel on Ino's chest, kunai at the blonde's throat, flipping black hair out of her eyes with a quick toss of her head. Her bokken lay abandoned less than a meter away.

Ino's hands came together, arms contorted slightly so that her fingers were positioned in front of Eiji in an almost heart-shaped seal. She seemed ready to enact a last-ditch attack, before Eiji's fist took her in the side of her bleeding head, knocking her unconscious.

With a weary-but-satisfied grin, my friend climbed off her opponent, looking up at the proctor for confirmation of her victory. Nodding, he declared her the winner; Ino's sensei hopped down to retrieve her while Eiji gathered her bokken and trudged back up to us.

Unlike Ino, she didn't receive any physical support from Aruno-sensei, just a wave of cheerful, chatty congratulations, which we all did our nauseated best to ignore. Raiyo and I offered our own, much more subdued congrats as Eiji collapsed next to me, laying her head on my shoulder.

"Damn it, Eij, had me damn worried when you almost fell."

"Can you _relax_, girl?" she replied, grinning up at me. It wasn't until she went on that I realized she was not talking about her battle. "Seriously, hun, you haven't stopped swearing since I told you about the Chūnin Exams. Calm down and concentrate, would ya?"

I paused to watched Akimichi Chouji and Hyūga Neji battle it out for a moment. Maybe it was my yearning for Suna hitting me harder than usual—maybe because Gaara was here—but she was right. I'd been sullen and dark except when I was absorbed in the match. Hell, I was even thinking angry.

"Ergh. Sorry, Eij." I smiled weakly. "I'll sure as hell try."

We both laughed mirthlessly at accidental irony; and I tried not to look at Raiyo, because I didn't want to try and apologize to him again, too.

-/-

The Akimichi-Hyūga battle ended predictably. Honestly, I was surprised that, with his skill and drastic recent personality changes, Hyūga wasn't a chūnin yet; this was almost certainly his year. After that, Inuzuka Kiba battled it out with Rock Lee; and Haruno Sakura fought some ninja from Takigakure. I fell into a half-waking daze as I watched, trying to will my injuries healed with rest, apparently. Eiji nudged me awake long after my vision had blurred toward slumber.

"You'll want to see this next match," she grinned. Eyes narrowed against the still-present sleep, I glanced toward the blinking-bright screen.

Rough wood scraped under my ungloved fingertips as I too-hurriedly pushed myself to my feet. A splinter, whisper-thin and razor-sharp, tunneled into my hand, but I hardly noticed.

"Oh, hell. Hell, hell, hell. Damn it!" The words that followed my tirade were far more colorful, and Eiji watched me patiently.

"Going to give up?" she asked when I was done.

"Hell, no," I snapped, stalking over to the railing. Vaulting over it was not my style, but my opponent was already in the ring, and his expression told me that taking the stairs would keep him waiting just a little too long.

I climbed onto the wooden rail, feeling the cool smoothness from countless shinobi hands and feet. Across the room, stone hands rose from the ground in a solid sign, a jutting mountain reminder of the fierce violence that was damn likely to ensue.

I didn't so much jump as let myself fall. And before I could start readying my pitiful handfuls of sand with pulses of chakra, it rose into the air and waved encouragingly over my head in wisps of golden cloud.

Because the glaring yellow letters on that damn screen said _Izari Sunako vs. Gaara_, and obviously that damn computer wanted me dead.

-/-

As with all his thoughts, Gaara wasn't sure if he believed in fate. He spoke with slow certainty, but there was the distinct possibility—that drove him deeper into insanity than the blood lust and the demon itself—that everything he believed bled over from the Shukaku's dark consciousness.

His thoughts were not his own. Ever.

Nonetheless, it might have been fate that it was the sand girl who approached now to fight him. Or it might not have been—the Shukaku whispered tantalizingly of the scarlet-soaked sand, of the gold-dust already infused with chakra and blood, and the host couldn't think straight—ever again.

It would not matter, in this crimson-coated lifetime, who she had ever been.

Or who he had been, either, because that child was gone.


	7. To Hell With This

**A/N: **Chapter a day early, because I'm leaving town this afternoon and won't be back 'til Sunday. Hope you enjoy this chapter! I did. It started out so intense that I felt like I'd written two or three chapters, when really, I was only halfway through one. XD

-/-

I blocked out dark wood and splinters until the world narrowed to a stretch of open desert and jewel-blue sky. A spinning desert storm—Sabaku no Gaara, wrapped in his own sandrush of gold—filled my vision like the towering devil. The dust devil hungering to devour me whole.

Well, I sure as hell wasn't going to let him.

Heh, I barely even heard the proctor set us loose. The fierce determination—it bordered on hell-bent anger, but I was only angry at _everything_—coiled itself around my throat and cut off my air until I let my chakra burrow into my own little pile of precious gold-dust. Exhaling explosively, I twisted around my arm and spat it toward Gaara with half a snarl.

A second too late, I realized I had been too slow. _Way _too damn slow. I had been locked in a cage of chakra and fury, and my driving sand needles were lost in a golden haze. He didn't even hesitate in devouring me.

Hell, hell, hell!

I ducked into a crouch, as if that could save me. Sand rushed over my head, blocking out the starspeck shinobi audience all around. Faces blurred and ran in an agony of dust.

Then again, everybody dies alone. With no one to watch me, nothing was changed.

Swiftly drawing kunai from the holster at my hip, I touched the blade to a barely-scabbed scar, unable to ignore the stinging storm worrying at my skin like a yellow jacket swarm. A line of blood like a smile welled up across my palm; I smiled grimly back at it and shoved my hand into the storm.

Blood whipped away into the whirling frenzy. Feeling more trickling over my cheeks like macabre tears, I wiped my other hand, my kunai-wielding hand, across my face until my knuckles were stained red with gritty pain. I felt like I was probably grinding the grit deeper into my skin, but the pain only bled into anger and a thirst for life.

My own blood streamed around me as Gaara's attack closed in. Almost, I could hear him talking, though the roaring of his element overwhelmed the words. Just a slight mumbling drifted through the storm, dark muttering fingers of sound.

"Too… easy. Not even… fight… Mother."

I was a mummy in a gold-dust coffin, and my image of the desert waved out of existence. My closet was my new cage, and dark claustrophobia nightmares.

Concentration slipped away like a mirage in the desert, or the water in a Konoha forest stream. Heart stopped, eyes closed, I flung out my hands, stretching my arms like I could push the walls away.

It was almost like shoving them in a meat grinder. Again, my blood fountained into the storm as I choked on my lion's-claw screams.

Within the spinning golden death, every grain of sand that had been with me as I infused them with blood and sparkling chakra… stopped. Gaara's ravaging monster, so intent on bleeding me out before I died, raged on, but my own sand halted like rocks in the rapids. No longer driven by my orders, the flecks fought their way through the rush and flung themselves toward the source of the assault.

The storm rippled, shuddered, died. It pooled on the floor, then slithered back to its master. Peppered by pinpricks of gold, Gaara growled like a wolf was ripping its way out of his throat. Shielded by sand of his own, my little gnats of dust couldn't do more than annoy and distract him, but it was enough to earn my reprieve.

I went for a shuriken, but it fell from shaking, mangled fingers. Cursing loudly, I went for another, forcing my crying digits to close. Gaara recovered. I looked up and flung out my free hand and told the sand to go for his cold hard eyes.

I thought at first, irrationally, that the diamond in his eyes would prevent me from hurting them. For the moment, trying to regain control, I just struggled to irritate, but when the wave came swelling toward me, threatening imprisonment again, I lost it.

I heard him snarl something. _Coffin of Crushing Sand. _I felt bones snap and crunch—arms, ribs, _pain_—and then I felt my own barely-controlled sand coil into wire-thin weapons and drive through Gaara's eyes.

We screamed together, a grisly chorus as dust-made tides crashed to the wooden floor. I saw Gaara's pale hands shaking as they tried to stem the flow of scarlet tears. His skin wept crimson; he collapsed to his knees; and I passed out.

-/-

I found I was always in pain, waking or sleeping, so the wavering in between didn't have much distinction. Then again, _awake _hurt a hell of a lot more than _asleep_, so I tried to stop waking up as soon as possible.

Especially since Eiji was always sitting there calmly, but Raiyo hovered, and a strip of bandages across an eye that wasn't mine hurt a lot, too.

-/-

I barely had time to rest, once I really woke up. I suppose my half a week in-and-out unconsciousness was taken to be rest enough. Exhausted from chakra healing—I still felt I would never breathe again; there was only so much the medic-nin could do—I was dragged off by a man I didn't know (with only one visible eye; who the hell was tormenting me like this?) from the moment my sand-roughed feet touched the cold hospital floor.

As I stumbled after this strange tanned man, who hailed from Suna according to his _hitai-ate_, Eiji whispered cryptically, "You didn't lose." But we were moving at too unkind a pace for me to stop and demand why the hell she couldn't just say 'you won'? At least she and Raiyo were trailing after me like uncertain baby birds. Once this stranger stopped ripping my arm out of my socket, I would interrogate them.

"Where the hell are we going?" I tried to ask, but I think too many painkillers blurred my speech. My kidnapper merely cast me a scathing glance.

I was damn certain I was going to pass out again. Tripped, I reached for my sand pouch, hoping to detach myself from this man, but it had been left behind in the hospital room, along with my actual clothes; I was wearing just a white hospital gown. At least it was summer.

"Oi," I protested angrily, as I stumbled over my feet and hit the floor with a crack. Damn. Damn damn damn. I only realized I was swearing out loud when the man glared at me. Well, no—he was doing that already. It was when Eiji poked me and grinned that I shut up.

Then I changed my mind, decided that I'd rather make my displeasure known.

-/-

I wheezed as the angry man pulled me into an office where the Hokage sat behind a cramped, hospital-office desk. I scowled, then gaped, then covered my eyes as the world spun like a top.

"Baki," said Tsunade with a sigh. "You didn't even let the child rest?"

"She's been sleeping for four days," he pointed out darkly.

"And she's not recovered." She slammed the palm of her hand down on the desk.

"Neither is Gaara," growled Baki, unperturbed.

"And all our best doctors are trying. I myself am working on saving his eyes. But _he _is not up and walking around either."

Not the least bit leery of interrupting the Hokage (I probably should have been), I croaked, "Why am I here?"

Tsunade turned her gaze to me. I watched her face swim in and out of focus as she crossed her arms over her unnecessarily large chest.

"The match between you and Sabaku no Gaara was declared a draw."

Well, damn. I resolved to kick Eiji for false hope.

"At this point in time, it appears that Gaara is going to go completely blind. We are still trying to save his vision, as I just said, but it looks unlikely. His eyes were mutilated by your attack."

"At least I stopped before his brain," I muttered. Tsunade inclined her head in acknowledgment.

"The fact remains that you have blinded the Kazekage's son."

"It was a fair fight!" I protested angrily.

"Yes, it was. There is no denying that the risk was present, and all who entered were aware of it. Nonetheless, at Baki's—" she cast him a somewhat sour glance "—request, it has been decided that you will return to Sunagakure with Gaara, seeing as neither of you will be required to fight further. Once there, you will become his—guide, of sorts."

Shock first, then rage. Boiled across my vision, blocked my throat. My dream come true—home to Suna. Not like this. Desert gods, not like this. Not with that monster.

"—help him acclimatize—"

I couldn't make myself concentrate on all of Tsunade's words anymore. I would _not _be chained to Sunagakure's demon. There was only space for that adamantine conviction inside my head.

"—until such a time as the Kazekage sees fit to release you."

No—_no. _That could be—'til _death_, for all I knew. "No," I choked, in a hoarse, furious whisper.

"This is not a request."

"I _will not_—_monster!_" I couldn't force my thoughts into a coherent sentence. "He is a _monster_, let him go blind, _let him_ spend the rest of his life—crashing into walls—"

"He is the Kazekage's son." Her voice was cold, no longer holding any respect for me.

"The hell do I care?" I yelled, panicking. "I've lived here ten years, I'm pretty damn sure I belong to the Hokage now!"

"Sunako's ours," cut in Eiji firmly, and that was probably a hint of desperation in her eyes, when I turned to look at her, having forgotten she and Raiyo were still around. "Loyal to Konoha."

_Oh, Eij, shut the hell up and don't lie to the Hokage for _me. But I was too busy trying to save my own damn skin to say it out loud.

Baki's smoldering temper flared up again, encouraged by the bellows of our defiance. "Very loyal, disobeying your Hokage," he snapped, arms folded, knuckles white. "We have no shinobi to spare, Izari; you will return to Suna and bear the consequences of your actions!"

If he hadn't been a Sunagakure jōnin, I might have killed him.

As it was, I had trouble clamping down on the wave of rage-driven sand that twisted into the air.

-/-

"What about my mother?" I demanded, barely reigning in a decidedly snappish tone, having just managed to get my sand under control. Neither attacking Baki nor the Hokage would be a particularly brilliant plan. Then again, Baki was gone; he and my erstwhile squadmates had been shooed out by Tsunade. I hoped I'd have a chance for goodbye.

"Your mother will be given the choice whether to stay or return with you," Tsunade explained calmly, resting her elbows on her desk and twining her fingers under her chin. "If she stays, she will be cared for."

"Mom needs—a hell of a lot of care," I muttered, faltering. Not anger there, just fear, just—indecision. I didn't know, couldn't damn well tell if I wanted her to come. Her beloved daughter, her beloved desert—her beloved husband's grave. Didn't know which she most wanted to avoid.

She'd be out of my hands, if she stayed. Hell, I could have my own _room_ again, and spend my stipend on something besides her damn cigarettes. Konoha itself would fund them instead.

"Don't—put her in the hospital." It was a sudden, constricting terror. Mom had no particular fear of hospitals, not like so many shinobi who'd lost friends there; Dad had died in the desert, not in a sterile white room. But—if she were there—how the hell long until I joined her? It felt too damn much like foreshadowing. Like mother, like daughter. Hell.

Tsunade raised an eyebrow. "Is she sick?"

"She—" I sure wasn't going to say she was crazy. "—Smokes. She smokes."

"Ah."

That seemed sufficient to her. She didn't add to it.

I stood there awkwardly, still more than a little angry, but piling sand on top of that anger, like an hourglass marking the passage of time, burying it. _I should go—pack. Hah. Pack _what? _My closet?_

"You may go," Tsunade said at last, just when I thought my heart would burst. Ducking my head in a sullen bob, I pivoted and marched out.

Raiyo converged on me like his own flock of mother geese. I mostly ignored him, looking over his shoulder and smiled mirthlessly at Eiji, and she smiled regretfully back, and we both knew it was going to be a long night.


	8. How to Say Goodbye

**A/N: **Not a very exciting chapter, I hope you'll forgive me; I, for one, rather like it anyway. :D Maybe the fact that it's slightly longer than usual will make up for it. :P

-/-

"Let's have a party," said Eiji abruptly, holding herself together admirably well. Better than me; I was shaking like the forest in a gods-sent storm. I knew better than to think she didn't care because she didn't show it; the shortness in her voice, the tightness in her shoulders—they were enough of a break from never displaying distress that I knew she might snap. (Or she wanted to.) Any other time, it would have warmed me, how much she really cared. Reason and pain and a prophetic loneliness meant right now that it just coiled a chain around my heart.

"I'll bring the chocolate," I offered, smiling mirthlessly. I could skim off Mom's stash; I'd paid for it, after all.

"Hun, we may need more chocolaty goodness than you can get from your mother's half-quality stack." She clasped her hands in front of her lips, thumbnail between her teeth. "I'll ask my parents."

I shrugged. Eiji's parents were reasonable, so we wouldn't get a wild abandon out of this. Wouldn't get forgetting in the form of loud music and all-night caffeine drips; or of sugar splurging beneath the diamond-spattered sky of Konoha, or even with the bottle of sake we could probably get ahold of if we tried.

For a fleeting moment, such a party sounded—perfect. Such a party would keep Konoha wrapped in sound and light inside my heart when I left.

But I realized I didn't want to forget like that, not even just with my best friend in all the world. If I was going to lock away the ten years I'd spent longing for the place I was being forced to now, I wanted to remember.

All I really wanted to _forget_ was the pain.

-/-

We didn't invite Raiyo. This was just us, just two best friends who didn't want to say goodbye.

I thought of him with a touch of guilt and wondered if distance meant it would hurt less when he died.

Eiji insisted I didn't come 'til late. I argued halfheartedly; I had to leave rather early, and I needed all the time to say goodbye that I could get.

But she crossed her arms and stared at me and told me to be late. So I trudged through the streets of Konoha at 11:11 and wished for the desert.

Not for Gaara.

Her parents were asleep, she said, and her parents slept like rocks buried in the sand, so it didn't matter that they'd ok'd this. She'd pulled the top layer of her hair back, so a thin tail swept over a raggedy black cascade; and she'd removed the midnight blue 'arm socks' she normally wore, so her sleeves were pure fishnet.

Her room had changed since I was last here (a few days ago, before the Chūnin Exams had attacked). All her furniture had been moved to one wall, giving almost a squished feeling to that side of the room, with her bed (large) next to her dresser (small) next to her desk (covered in scattered scrolls and a forest of bamboo). That left a blank wall across from the furniture, and she had covered it with a pattern of elaborate masks, far more organized than the rest of her room.

But they weren't ANBU masks. ANBU masks were porcelain and simple. These—these creations were wood and feathers and bits of glitter that looked like forest streams. They were arranged in a row of connected diamonds, each right point the left point of the next; flowing in an order that looked like a rainbow of complex shading, starting at red—green ran to teal to blue-green to royal blue to midnight. From Eiji's open window, a summer breeze made a brief foray, and the feathers rippled, shuddered, like they were going to fly away, one great plumed dragon.

At the final point, all the way to the left, there _was _an ANBU mask, as incongruous as a cuckoo in a blue jay's nest. Bone-white, blank—the initiate's, the unordained.

I frowned. "You're not—"

Eiji looked at me, then laughed mirthlessly. "Gods no. With hardly a C-mission beneath my belt, how the hell would I make ANBU?"

She trailed her fingers over dark blue feathers, letting them land on black ones that so perfectly matched her black hair and complemented her elaborate red hood (that she almost never wore), the same scarlet as my own preferred outfit.

"I just like the way they look." She lifted the blank mask off its hook, leaving the dragon without a head, and placed it over her face, turning towards me.

"Look. I'm smiling, but you can't tell."

-/-

Eiji still lived with both her parents, which meant she didn't survive on her shinobi stipend like me. (As you might imagine, nobody gets paid a hell of a lot for D-Rank missions.) Because of this, she lived in a real house, with more than two and a half claustrophobia-inducing rooms—a fact I never begrudged her, partly because it meant I could invade her home if—when—I needed to get the hell away from the mound of pillows inhabiting my house.

Her back door opened onto a little alley, dank and grey and safe, like a storm shelter in the rain. That's where we sat, under the roofs and the trees and—if we looked real close—the glitter-smile of the stars.

Eiji had set a portable stereo on the sullen black asphalt; we sprawled beside it, heedless of charcoal-dust stains on dark clothing. Endless footprints marked this alleyway—shinobi spies or lonely drunks or broken lovers or leaving friends. Somewhere deep inside us, we wanted those footprints to rub off on us. They would last forever and we wouldn't and we wanted to.

The music beat in time with our hearts just loud enough to drown out the half-hearted buzzing of the street lamps and the shouting two houses down and someone else's party around the block. It mourned for us so we didn't have to listen to the leaves rustling or the memories whispering or our own dull depressing dreams. _(Stay alive, just live and have a few friends and die old with no need to see your name or your friends' on the Hero's Memorial Stone.)_

But we were shinobi and we heard all those things anyway.

"Some goodbye," said Eiji musingly. "Some wild party we're having here."

"Don't want a party, Eij," I said wearily, leaning back on the concrete-cold step and peering through the shadow-leaf haze to the sky. "I don't want to celebrate going away."

"You should say," she murmured, " 'going home.' "

"Maybe I should," I agreed. "But damn it, Eiji, I'm afraid I'll never _make_ it home, not in the company of that… demon."

"Demon." She smiled slightly, nail in her teeth. "That's harsh."

"Did you _see_ his eyes?" I moaned, throwing my arm back against my forehead and leaving it there.

"They _were _gorgeous," she teased. "I haven't seen them since you mangled them."

"_Don't _remind me." I gritted my teeth and closed my own eyes. "That's what got me into this mess in the first place."

"Hun, you were just trying to win."

"I know." I sighed. "But I guess that's a punishable offense."

-/-

Asphalt dirt and concrete streaked the red cloth of our clothing and made us look like we'd rolled in blood spilled on the ground. It had to be passing two a.m.; we'd played the same thrumming CD until it had faded into the starry alley background and we barely knew it was there.

Just talking. Sometimes, just quiet.

"Eiji," I said suddenly, another symptom of my departure hitting me in the heart. "You won, didn't you? Your match? And—"

"And drugged-out and half-blind, Raiyo did, too," she interrupted absently. "Kid got lucky."

I swallowed the hand reaching to clench around my lungs. It latched onto my heart. "I won't get to see you guys go on."

"Don't worry, 'Nako. I'll send you a letter telling you what happened."

I snorted. "That damn Baki'll probably intercept it. I probably wouldn't even get it after he read it."

"Alright, then." She smiled. "I'll send you messages in your dreams."

I half-laughed. (I couldn't tell if she was joking.) "Wanna tell me how you plan to do that?"

"It's a secret."

"Mm." I opened my eyes and raised an eyebrow. "I never remember my dreams."

"You'll remember this one."

"You sound so sure."

"In a war between Konoha and Suna, 'Nako, who would you support?"

Her voice was surprisingly plaintive; I sat up and looked at her, long and hard. "I don't know," I said. "I really, really don't know."

And she didn't call me on the lie. Maybe because it really wasn't.

-/-

"Oh, hell, Eij, I gotta leave in an _hour_," I slurred, exhausted, staring up at the faintly glowing sky. She giggled, drunk on nothing more than sleep deprivation and sugar.

"Better go home and pack," she sniggered, knowing as well as I did that there wasn't a damn thing to pack.

Crumpled wrappers to various and sundry chocolate bars littered the pavement like curled up spiders and dead butterflies. Shivering as the chill of the asphalt soaked through my skin—it may have been summer, but nights still cooled off when they hit the deadest darkest hour—I thought vaguely of cleaning them up, but it just seemed like too damn much effort.

"Why d'you gotta leave at—eh—" She peered up at the sky, trying to determine what time it was. "—So damn early anyway?"

I shrugged sullenly. "Gaara never sleeps, I guess. Dunno how the hell he manages that, just what Baki told me. Since he doesn't sleep, we don't have to wait for him to wake up to leave. Guess they don't give a damn about consideration for anyone else."

"What if you don't show up?"

I cast her a startled look and grinned, caught by the sparkle in her eye. "I'd probably get a tongue-lashing from Lord Baki."

"Yeah, but what's he gonna do? Leave without you?"

"Hahaha, I wish. Maybe they would."

"Care to test it?"

"What, in the interests of _sleep?_"

"Psh, sleep."

Bitterness ran through my voice like blood laced with sickness. "What the hell _else_ are we gonna do with a couple extra hours, Eij? Take even longer to say goodbye?"

She was unperturbed. "See a movie, catch a show, do something fun."

"Movie theater's not open." I closed my eyes, swallowed. We were both desperate. Right now, I wasn't sure who was more. "I've got to go." Moving slowly, as if leads weighted down all my limbs, I rose to my feet and gathered together all our candy wrappers and broken dreams. "Are you—are you gonna come see me off, or are you gonna be sensible and sleep?"

She lay where she was, watching me, head on her arms, hair spread heedlessly over the pavement. "I'll tell you a secret. I don't actually know how to say goodbye."

-/-

Half an hour to go and I still hadn't said goodbye to Mom. Damn. I had a brief affair with the thought of not even telling her, but it flitted away, reproaching me as it went. She might not notice if I was gone—but then again, she might, and it might drive her—I dunno. I dunno what it would do.

I headed for Eiji's front door, trudging most unwillingly. She grabbed my arm and turned me around.

"Not yet, hun, I've got something."

She led me back to her room. I followed quietly. Thinking. There was something I was missing—

"Eij." I swore effusively in my head, damning that I hadn't realized it sooner. Never was a quick thinker. "They're going to have to assign you a new squad member."

"Not if I make chūnin." She smiled winningly, stepping through her door. "And you can bet on it, girl, I'm gonna make chūnin."

I wanted to say, _But what if you don't. _Because more than likely, they'd put another guy on her team. And it would be my fault.

"You damn well better, Eij."

Grinning, she moved towards her mask-adorned wall and gazed at it for a few minutes, thumb thoughtfully between her teeth, as usual. Finally, she reached out, hand steady as stone, and lifted one off its arrow-straight hook.

Turning around, she held it out to me.

Yellow-gold feathers, almost the color of the desert and tipped with delicate sky blue, stuck out from one side like half a butterfly. Down the other side of the ellipse ran a swirl of gold glitter, almost in the shape of an ANBU tattoo.

"Eij—"

"I'll get a new one to fill the hole." She smiled tightly, and I thought she might be lying. "We'll be our own kind of ANBU."

-/-

The demon raged inside him, still wild with fury. It roared, it _screamed_ around inside his head, and he only half tried to contain it. He was as angry, as agonized, eyes burning with the last remnants of needle-sharp sand. _Betrayed._

Gold-diamond stars rose in pits of ebony, but even the demon couldn't use mangled eyes, although it tore the bandages from its host's face with warped and twisted hands. Shredded cloth, stained with the last lingering blood of unhealed wounds, drifted to the ground like tainted snow, the contrast to his untamed wrath.

No medic would come to replace the bandages. No medic would dare.

His own family wouldn't come near.

-/-

"I'm going on a really, really long mission, Mom," I muttered, slinging a pack with two changes of clothing (one identical to the one I was already wearing) and a set of pajamas over my back. I had hooked Eiji's mask to the belt of my sand-pouch with a little length of string, and it weighed there like guilt.

She crooned and simpered, telling me how proud she was that I was being trusted with a lengthy—and therefore important—mission. I guess she didn't comprehend just how long I meant. "I don't know when I'll be back."

Then I walked out. I think I hoped someone would keep her alive. I wasn't sure.

Raiyo was standing there, surprising me. I swallowed and met his eyes—eye. Maybe he was an idiot, but he was a teammate, and that meant he was family. Aruno-sensei popped out from behind a building halfway to the gates, chattering and bubbling. I tried to ignore him. I couldn't decide if he was family or not. (I didn't want him to be. I didn't need a family.)

Eiji didn't show. I stopped at the gates of Konoha, gazing up at them, unwilling to look ahead, where Gaara stood, half-hunched over with madness or pain, I didn't know, side-by-side with Baki, his keeper. His other squadmates were nowhere to be found; I guess they got to stay behind and finish the Exams. Lucky.

I pivoted, hugged Raiyo impulsively, suffered one from Aruno-sensei. "Make chūnin," I whispered to my half-blind brother, closing my eyes and feeling my stomach twist into knots. He probably wouldn't. He'd probably die.

Then I spun and strode toward my _new_ family, the ones like to kill me at a moment's notice, head held as high as I could manage, Konoha headband tied firmly in place.

I looked back, and saw Eiji leaning against a building, some distance away from the rest of our—her—squad. She wasn't crying.

But then, neither was I.


	9. We Shinobi

**A/N: **It has been a while, but I didn't forget. Due to complications of muse and life, I won't be posting on a set schedule any longer, only when I have the inspiration. Forgivez me! I love you. (:

Also, vague idea of what the characters look like: http:/ameko-shadowsong(dot)deviantart(dot)com/art/16-Web-116169440

-/-

We hadn't gone half a dozen paces down the road before I had twice as many minor cuts and bleeding wounds. None of them hurt overmuch, but little trails of red trickled over my skin, tickling like butterfly kisses, and I didn't want to die of blood loss before we hit halfway to Suna.

Finally, I tried to move around Baki so that he was between me and Gaara. He reached out, grabbed my shoulder, and held me firmly in place as we walked.

"Why?" I spat. "You're his keeper."

"Wrong," said the man, and I easily detected the smugness in his tone, despite his hard blank eyes. "_You _are his keeper now. You blinded him. You guide him."

Inside, I seethed. Outside, Gaara's sand roiled, writhing like a dying beast, stray grains rising up to prod and bite like flies off the carcass. His sight may have been gone, but his hearing worked just fine.

"Gaara," I snapped, "if you don't want me to die—"

He lurched toward the sound of my voice, face twisted in a snarl. I tried not to imagine his eyes, mangled and gaping holes beneath the bandages, bandages _somebody _had to have wrapped for him. Baki, probably. Damn, that would make it my job now.

I was going to be dead within the hour.

"Why _wouldn't _I want you to die?" he hissed, lunging, tripping, and falling to his knees. Briefly, I thought of helping him. Savagely, and cowardly, I stayed where I was as he struggled back to his feet.

He wove toward me like a drunk—and no longer guided by my voice, I wondered if, like an Inuzuka, he now followed my scent. It might have been funny, the sight of such a terrifying shinobi reduced to stumbling and staggering, but it wasn't. It just made me sick.

Inadvertently, I took a step back. Baki stood behind me, statue-like, and I collided with him, my own sand twittering around my hands. With an effort, I forced it down; Gaara may not have known that my sand moved on its own when I was nervous, but… Well, living in Konoha, you got to learn how to deal with wild animals in the forest. You didn't exude anxiety.

Oh hell. Guide? What was I going to do, take his hand and lead him along?

I glanced back toward Konoha. I could still see the gates, and maybe I could still see my friends. _Suna_, I mouthed bitterly, as if I were telling Eiji how to find me, and then I moved to face my fate.

My fate was angry. He was angry and he was in pain and I had not the slightest clue what to do about it. Gods above, at the pace we were moving with his stumbling agonized gait, it'd take us a month to hit Suna.

I just wanted to swear repeatedly at him, but instead, I made the effort to slip a few grains of sand through the boiling shield of sand now protecting him from our view. Taking a wild guess that it might calm him down, I let them alight on his shoulders, thinking, _The sand is _his _element, so he just might accept it—_

But the breach of his territory only made him angrier. What looked big enough to be a tsunami lunged toward me; I backpedaled, trying not to be afraid because I sure as hell wasn't going to admit fear to these too. _Damn that Baki, he's probably enjoying watching this, damn well probably going to let me die, the cruel, sadistic ba—_

"Gaara, enough."

Well damn, he was going to save me after all. Probably didn't want back the responsibilities of caretaker. It was a blow to my pride, but in the long run, it was also my life, so I bore it.

For one instant, I thought that Gaara would fail to heed Baki, too, as he rounded on the man with another inhuman snarl. I shrank away, though his attention had not lingered on me, and tried to guess how a human boy grew to be so feral.

But he was a beast trained to obey its master. Baki did not flinch from Gaara's wordless threats, and so the growling boy subsided.

"I do not need… _help_," he insisted in a low, furious voice. As his actions proved those words a lie and he once more stumbled and fell, I heard almost an echo of anguished desperation behind his tone.

If I'd had one damn iota of kindness inside me then, I might have moved in to show it, and maybe planted a seed inside his sandy, stony heart. But resentful, repulsed, and outraged, I cowered back and pretended my confrontational side knew when to take a break.

-/-

Baki took short, tense steps that made it clear he wanted to break into long strides that would move him far ahead of Gaara and I. I was sourly grateful that he didn't; I had no desire to walk beside the redhead alone.

Or even accompanied by another. I changed pace repeatedly, trailing behind, tripping on ahead, but never daring to be more than a few steps away, sand always misting around me. After ten agonizing minutes, I caved in to the discomfort of having unstable, raving Gaara behind me; we'd learned long ago not to turn our backs on the enemy, and if Gaara and his damn sensei weren't my enemies, I sure as hell didn't want to meet the ones who were. Falling back, I endeavored to keep my pace even with theirs, though Gaara moved slowly and haltingly as a disorganized army.

Time, too, passed with all the rapidity of winter in Konoha, inching by like it would never end. The trees hardly changed, only the patterns of dappling on the summer-green ground, and I didn't know if we'd walked even an hour beneath the leaves.

What I wouldn't give to be back home where I could see the sky. Oh, that's right—I'd already given it; I'd left my friends, family, and freedom in Konoha so I could return to Suna the one way I never wanted to go.

I should have thought of that a long time ago, when all I could consider were the depths to which I wanted to return.

_Be careful what you wish for. _Whoever the hell thought that one up needed a kunai to the guy just for being right.

Fifteen and angry at the world, I could focus all I wanted on the Shinobi Rules of Conduct, but I still yearned to dream without consequences. Too bad consequences are what we shinobi are all about.

We _are _the consequences.

-/-

Even eyes focused only forward, my senses spread wide, searching for (other) enemy shinobi like a dog for its lost bone. I sure as hell wouldn't blame anyone for trying to kill these two—I could see any number of reasons for it—I just didn't want to die along with them. Plus, I damn well didn't want someone to off Baki and leave me alone with Gaara.

Movement in my peripheral vision drew my gaze: Baki, tugged a ribbon of cloud from one of his pouches. I swallowed and swore as he handed me a roll of bandages and pointed to the redheaded feral boy trudging along beside me.

So Baki'd finally decided that Gaara had walked with blank eyes and trailing bandages for long enough, and now it would be my job to replace the grimy shreds of tattered cloth.

Damn.

Holding the proffered bandages limply in on hand, I turned to Gaara and stopped walking. He kept going, oblivious to anything but his own pain and fury.

"Gaara," I muttered, and was unheard or ignored. Baki stood behind me, obnoxiously close, arms crossed, unhelpful in every way.

Gritting my teeth, I repeated louder, "Gaara," and he paused, turning his face to me in a gesture of habit, even though he could no longer see. Rivulets of crimson trickled over his pale cheeks, seeping through crevices in his skin—it must have been a layer of sand—and spreading in faint blotches nigh on the same hue as his hair. Was that color natural, then, or had he dyed it with the blood of a thousand victims?

No, stupid theory. He'd had red hair when we'd been five years old and innocent, without any blood on our hands.

Aside from my own and his mother's. But that sure as hell wasn't his fault.

Then again, what he'd done since then damn well _was_.

Raising my hand as if making an offering to a god, I showed Gaara the bandages, then muttered an oath at my stupidity. "Fresh bandages," I explained shortly, shifting my gaze slightly to the left so that I didn't have to look straight into his mangled eyes.

"I don't need them," he hissed.

"The hell you don't, you're bleeding," I snapped, then cringed.

Sand rushed toward me like a devil I couldn't defeat, and I flinched backwards. Flecks of gold leapt to my defense, but they were flies before a storm, and no help to me.

"Gaara." One commanding word from Baki and the sand hesitated—rushed forward still—then collapsed to the ground, obedience beaten into it like a pathetic puppy.

Damn it, I was going to have to learn that tone of voice if I wanted to survive more than ten minutes without Baki breathing down my neck. Or else I would have to create my own system—teach that dying dog a new way to learn.

We shinobi are admirable people.

"Just let me put on the damned bandages," I muttered, eyes still to the side but taking a step closer. Trying not to tremble like weeds before a gardener. After all, Gaara would never build a garden; he'd only tear it down and leave the whole thing to rot.

The redhead stayed where he was, breathing heavily, glaring with empty eyes, but not advancing, not reacting. One more pace from either of us and I could have reached out to weave the cloth around his battered eyes, although it would be a hell of a lot less awkward to be even closer. Less awkward for the wrapping, anyway, not for either I or the monster.

A sick sour feeling like old lemons coated my throat at the idea of touching this untamed creature's skin, of being that near to his wrath. Sand shifted over my own skin, donning scarlet garments of the blood from my arms; I picked my own grains from the breeze and artlessly shoved chakra into them. Tendrils of gold curled around the white cloth and lifted it from my hand, shakily carrying it like a broken bird.

My lack of fine control showed itself clearly in the sloppy, lopsided job the sand did of wrapping. Blood seeped slowly up into the snow, staining it in indistinct streaks.

Gaara tensed and growled, disliking the darkness across his lifeless vision, uncomfortable with the feel of bandages across his face. The cloth slipped, brushing his cheekbone and revealing the edges of one mutilated eye.

"Do it again," Baki ordered from behind me; I jumped and swore.

"Maybe later," I muttered darkly, casting him a sour sideways glance, even though he was too far behind for me to actually see him.

"Now." A hand bearing yet more fresh bandages appeared in my vision; I scowled at it.

What the hell would he do if I said no? Kill me? Do it himself?

Neither got him what he wanted: an absence of his further responsibility for Gaara. I would be the creature's keeper, and he would be the master who deployed the weapon as needed.

That damn man made me _mad_.

Snarling internally, I snatched the fabric from Baki and advanced the last step toward Gaara. To my surprise, he flinched backwards, maybe sensing the sudden movement. Startled, I gasped slightly, feeling like I'd inhaled a bug. A few grains of sand probably went down my throat, but I'd get used to that living in the desert again, I was sure.

"More bandages," I mumbled, frowning, trying to cover up both our slips with a restatement of the obvious. Even without seeing, he must have heard Baki's orders.

Reluctantly, I reached out with one tense hand, looping a finger around the slackly-woven cloth and tugging, trying my damndest not to touch Gaara as I did so. My knuckles brushed against his hair, which was as stiff and gritty as the toughest desert shrubs; I repressed a shudder and pulled the damn bandages off.

He hissed through his teeth, snarled, and an instant later, I was hip-deep in sand and pain. The monster of grit leapt to my wrist, chaining me to myself; I felt the bone snap, but let out nothing more than a growl to rival Gaara's. It hurt like _hell_, though. I just didn't want to tell him that.

In one swift motion, Baki strode forward and pushed me away from Gaara, an action that might have been more effective had I not been anchored to the ground by a foundation of sand. Glaring at me as if that were _my _fault, he imposed himself between us, turning his full attention to his out-of-control genin.

"_Gaara_, that is _enough."_ His words rang with ice and steel; I could no longer see his eyes, but they must have been formidable, for my earthy prison slithered back over itself slightly, by no means freeing me but at least relaxing.

"Obviously, it has been a long time, Gaara, since we have allowed the success of our mission to depend on you." Baki's tone overflowed with derision. "You speculate as to why?"

"No." His voice was low, hissing, furious. "I don't."


	10. Snap

**A/N: **Not sure about the end… but I'm in a hurry. ;; Enjoy. (: This is chapter 10 already! How exciting.

-/-

Baki reached up and snapped a tree branch with a resounding crack similar to that of my wrist breaking. I winced severely, sending a shockwave of agony through my still-tethered arm; at either the movement or the sound, the sand slithered back, releasing me. I stumbled back and sagged against a tree.

The jōnin rifled in his pouch for something and came up short. He turned to me, twig still clenched in his hand—a splint, I guessed, doing my damnedest not to clutch at my wrist. I 'd had broken bones before, but they still hurt like hell.

"Do you have bandages, Izari?" he asked coolly, and I focused on his words to cut through the throbbing ache.

"Why, don't you?" I returned through gritted teeth.

"They are for Gaara's use." His one visible eye narrowed. It was a damn wonder that man wasn't squinty-eyed as a crook.

"Can't he carry his own damn bandages?" I muttered. "All shinobi should be prepared."

"That is why you should have your own."

Resisting the urge to growl at him, I dug into my own pouch. I hadn't exactly replenished my stock after the Forest of Death. Oh hell.

Wait—thank the gods, a bit of cloth I had missed that damn day in the forest. I tugged it out like a magician producing an endless white scarf. It sure as hell wasn't endless, though—it was relatively short, probably would only go around my wrist three or four times. I shook it violently, hoping to dislodge a crust of grit and scattered grains of sand. It must have been in the bottom of my pouch for an age.

Baki regarded it with scorn. I scowled back at him. "See?" I snarled under my breath. "I do carry them."

He heard me. "But not," he pointed out in one of his infuriating tones, "any that would be fit to bandage an open wound."

With a supreme effort, I concentrated on the grains of sand caught in the cloth and tried to draw it out, thus rendering the bandages slightly more sanitary. The damn things trembled violently and stayed put.

"But as you have no cavernous gashes on your wrist, they will have to be sufficient to splint your fracture. After all, you have the power to draw out any stray grains that should make their way into your blood, don't you?"

I wasn't sure if he was misinformed or just insulting me. Either way, I wanted to punch him.

Fuming, I snatched the stick from him and tried to bandage up my wrist one-handed. He watched me get a damn sloppy job done before he took over, wrapping my wrist swiftly and efficiently.

Gaara watched from a distance. Really, he didn't, but it sure as hell felt like it as he stood there, a sandstone statue with face turned toward us. Determinedly, I kept my eyes trained on my damn wrist, ignoring Gaara's sightless stare.

I wondered if it would get less damn creepy if it were behind fresh bandages, so I couldn't see his eyes.

Guessing that it probably wouldn't didn't exactly give me an overpowering inspiration to try approaching him again.

Fortunately, it was going to be damn difficult to help him one-handed. Baki was sure furious to have lost his substitute keeper so quickly into the venture; he'd have to do all the damn work himself now. I wondered if he'd send me home.

Which home? Hell yes I was making a fuss about going back to Suna, because I was being dragged without so much as a damn by-your-leave. But the honest-to-the-gods truth was that I damn well did want to be there.

I had to get back to Konoha before I reached Suna, or else I might never want to see a lush and towering tree again.

Baki cast me—rather more specifically, my damn snapped wrist—a sour glance, then gestured for Gaara to come towards him. When, blind as a dead bird, the redhead made no move to obey, the jōnin said irritably, "_Gaara_," as if he should have been able to see the gesture.

Gaara turned slowly towards the sound of his sensei's voice, and trudged forward like a reluctant zombie.

As Baki deftly retied Gaara's bandages himself, I looked up at him and asked bluntly, "Since I can't help, can I go?"

I'm sure there was a better way to do it, maybe convince him to think the idea was his own. But finagling my way through that discussion was outside of my ability range; I lacked the finesse that Eiji might have had. This way, he offered me a look of pure scorn.

I glared right back. Sure, I'd take orders from the Hokage, but I would not be cowed into obeying Baki like a beast bound to its master. Hell, that was Gaara's role.

"When we reach Suna," he said stiffly, "a medic-nin will mend that quickly. As a shinobi, you should be able to perform most everything you need one-handed."

Sure, and as a damn shinobi, I should have been able to snap his neck. But that was hardly inside my capabilities. Couldn't fight, couldn't finagle—what did I offer to the Shinobi Corps, anyway?

Just my damn life, I guess. But that should have been enough.

I moved closer to Gaara, resigned to my fate. Damn well not happy, but resigned. I'd maintain my dignity and stop complaining about it. To Baki. I could think any damn thing I wanted.

Reluctantly, I held out my hand—the one with the unbroken wrist—to Gaara and said his name once, sourly. Out of habit, he turned his eyes toward me. I frowned and held my ground. Baki took a step back and watched the monster and I as if we were on stage.

"My hand is outstretched," I muttered. "I'll lead you."

He reacted as if something snapped inside of him. For a moment, I actually thought the boy was going to take my damn hand, but the limb coming toward me was not Gaara's pale and gritty arm. It bulged and heaved, swollen by sand and embellished with blue veins like rivers on a map.

I hadn't the foggiest idea what the hell was going on. I watched one side of his face twist and warp, dislodging the bandages, and wondered why the hell we kept bothering with the damn things, because he couldn't seem to keep them on for more than a minute. As the monstrous limb swung toward me, I tried to block, but it was like stopping a sledgehammer with a feather. Gritty dark claws raked at the flesh of my arm, trailing searing agony, and the force of the blow sent me flying.

I hit a tree with a crack that left little desert suns in my vision. Baki had retreated, managing to look not at all like he was running away. He stood and watched with a cold irritation. Bastard. He couldn't even bring himself to care. The damn jōnin didn't even try and calm Gaara down. Guess he got tired of it.

Gritting my teeth, I clamped down on every urge to scream at the blood flowing at an alarming rate, spiderwebbing across my skin. I had my other hand clenched tightly around my arm, as if I could stop the bleeding, but it only caused the dull throbbing ache in my wrist to increase, like an excited heartbeat. Baki ignored me, presumably now punishing me for my lack of spare band-aids, not to mention my attempt to do my damn job.

"What the _hell_," I managed to snarl, "did you do to that boy? That he would respond to a damn kindness with a—a—" I let loose an inarticulate growl. "A whatever the hell he is? What the hell is he?"

"A demon," said the man nonspecifically, and nothing more.

Damn him. I could have figured that out for myself.

-/-

I figured out that Baki wasn't helping because he wanted me to calm the demon, but I hadn't the damndest idea how to do that, so I just watched him rage like his own little whirlwind as he cut a swath through the forest. A sick feeling hatched in my stomach, pecking away at my insides and tossing feathers up into my throat. I kept my face blank as I could and my stomach under control, though it threatened to heave violently every once in a while.

His rampage ended eventually just tapered out and died, like a worn out candle. He never _went _anywhere; maybe the demon part was just as freaked-the-hell-out with being blind as its… host. But the energy finally seeped out of him, and monster fell off in little quicksand waterfalls, leaving a panting Gaara on his knees.

Baki looked satisfied and straightened from where he'd been leaning against a tree. "We can go," he said like it was an order.

"I'm not going _anywhere_ 'til somebody tells me what the hell is going on!" I was sure these words would have been more impassioned if I hadn't been slumped against a tree, feeling weak from blood loss—damn Baki still hadn't felt the need to provide me with some more damn bandages—peppered with shredded leaves and splinters as if I were a salad. Both Suna-nin turned their eyes on me, though of four, I could only see one. It didn't look happy.

"That information is unnecessary."

"Like hell it is!"

Two eyes against one, I stared him down. I felt a wash of victory sweep over me and tried to repress it, but it was like trying to stop a tsunami. Quickly, I dropped my eyes to the green grass ground to hide my triumphant smirk.

Which slid away a moment later, startlement nipping at its heels. "I'll tell her," Gaara said, his voice low as a rumble of thunder, an undercurrent of fury and pain twisting together in his words. I stared at him in shock. As if he could sense it, he focused his mangled eyes directly on mine, like it would help. He still  
couldn't see me, and I couldn't bear to look at him.

He could have just told me he'd had a demon sealed inside him. Instead, he gave me every damn detail of his story, from its bloody beginning to its bloody end. I had nothing to say.

The children of Suna had always said he was a monster, but I didn't stick around long enough to find out why. His family was the reason he was like this. His own damn father did this to him. It didn't make his violent personality any less hellish. Only more.

Baki seemed to be expecting a reaction. Gaara, on the other hand, apparently got just the one he'd anticipated in my silent shock, because he turned around and started trudging for home.

If we moved at his stumbling uncertain pace all the way back to Suna, it would take us a month to get there, and I sure as hell wasn't going to live a month on roots, berries, and soldier pills. Digging out a kunai, I sawed a strip of black cloth from my long vest, leaving a ragged edge like a black cat's tail, then stood up and paced toward Gaara.

I didn't try to touch him again.

"Gaara," I said, softening my voice at the last syllable when the first came out too harsh. He'd probably suffered enough harsh words, and while I couldn't offer sympathy, I could at least try to be nice. He stopped and twisted halfway around.

"If I mix my blood with your sand, I can take enough control to guide you." It wouldn't last without a steady stream of the damn stuff, not with the volume of sand he carried, but I could damn well make an effort.

I imagined if he'd still had eyes, he would be staring at this damn fool girl who wanted to willingly give him her blood. Well, I damn well didn't want to, but when a little wave of sand rippled toward me, I held my still-bleeding arm up over it and let the crimson rain fall.

With every drop, the gold roiled higher, craving more, and I felt weaker. I swallowed a storm of nausea and kept my arm steady until my vision blurred and the sand began to brush at my skin. Then I pulled back and wrapped the makeshift black bandage sloppily around my arm, damned broken wrist slowing me down.

"Done," I breathed in as stable a voice as I could. Taking his sand with him, Gaara resumed his slow path.

I concentrated as hard as I could, despite dizziness and exhaustion. Was I supposed to have control in this state? I'd never make it back to Suna. No, I only had to make it to night, when I could sleep. Surreptitiously, I glanced at the sky. Early evening. But we hadn't gone very far at all. If I imagined hard enough, I could still see the gates of Konoha hazing between the trees. That was probably the damn bloodloss though.

Focus. I had to focus on the sand. Tensely, I glared at it, taking a few of my own steps without giving them any attention. I watched the ground and stared at the sand, and Gaara's paces grew steadier, more confident, as slowly, his sand moved around his feet, guiding him, moving stones and filling holes and keeping his path clear.

Oh hell. I had to be awake for this to see where he was going, but all I wanted was to pass out and puke until my throat bled. Possibly in that order.

Where was Eiji to hold back my hair when I needed her?

-/-

For the first time since he could remember, he walked with somebody else holding him up.

The demon defied while at the same time, it devoured. It felt no need for aid from this girl, felt only rage that it should be so weakened. But she had offered it blood, which it could not resist. Inside, it snapped at the crimson-soaked sand while the grains twisted around its host's feet and showed him where to step.

And Gaara, thinking of a little girl long gone, ignored it. The forest breeze whispered around him, shifting into the hissing evil voice of the Shukaku, but he struggled furiously to step free of the insidious murmuring. He may have had a sister who called him in from the screaming cold, and sometimes a brother whose frightened puppets danced for his entertainment, but they'd always made him stand on his own, straight and tall despite the weight upon his back and his heart that made him want to hunch over like an old man.

In the world he had grown up in, he had learned to depend on his own strength to keep him upright. But weary and blind, he couldn't work up the rage necessary to walk by himself.

So while the Shukaku buzzed angrily, trying to reawaken Gaara's spent fury, the redhead boy let someone else walk for him.

He didn't notice or care that the blood expended to help him was drawing the energy from someone else. That, he wanted more of. Because that's what kept him going.


	11. Leading the Blind

"He may be a demon and you may be a jōnin," I choked out at last, feeling my grasp on the last fluttering edges of my chakra fading away, "but I'm a human, and I need to sleep."

Baki cast a glance upward and scowled to see the sun just barely starting to drop. The shadows had deepened, but enough dappled light lingered to allow travel.

That was all well and good, but I had a migraine thundering in my head like my own personal waterfall and a flock of birds getting restless in my stomach.

"As a shinobi—" Baki began, but I sure as hell wasn't letting him go down that road again.

"Well, I'm not a full-fledged shinobi yet!" I snapped, settling against a sturdy sycamore. "I'm a damn genin!" Sensing my anger, Gaara stirred over where he had stopped to wait for my guiding sand. Damn leech.

Baki sighed, scowled, stared, and generally made his displeasure known. I ignored him, closing my eyes and waiting it out. At last, he said in a low growl, "There is a clearing up ahead where we can halt for the night. Will that suffice?"

A _good _shinobi would have realized that a clearing was an obvious place to stay and left us more open to attack, but I was too damn tired to care. "Fine," I muttered. "I'll make it that far."

-/-

When rough hands shook me awake, I expected it to be for my turn on watch. Instead, dawn struggled to penetrate the summer foliage, and Baki wanted to be on our way.

It was too damn early for the amount of exhausted I'd been, but I shouldn't have been surprised. It'd hardly been glowing dusk when we'd stopped. At least he hadn't kicked me awake.

I guess when your traveling companion never sleeps, you don't need a sentry. Still, with damn Gaara on the job, I would've preferred to have a guard on _him_. Well, who knew. Maybe Baki'd stayed up.

I shoved a soldier pill down my throat and considered a second as its enriched ingredients filtered into my system. But with the work I'd be doing, I'd probably be downing the damn things like candy throughout the day—thanking every desert kami that someone'd had the foresight to flavor all that puke with cocoa. All that energy, I'd be twice as worn out when I stopped. I'd stick with one for now.

Staggering to my battered feet—I'd tripped enough times while focusing on Gaara's path that _I _had nothing left but bloody stumps for toes—I wondered sourly what good Gaara'd be on watch anyway, since he couldn't even see.

Pulling together the tattered dregs of my semi-restored chakra, I ordered my sand to dog Gaara's footsteps for the next three hours.

-/-

After that, I was as drained as a dry well. Grains of even my blood-bound sand merely twitched feebly at my mental commands. Gaara just stopped and waited. Damn him.

"Gaara," I rasped, sagging against a thick tree trunk. That was one of the things I loved about Konoha: Had I tried to do that in Suna, I'd've been either stuck full of razor-thin needles from a cactus or on the ground because the damn bitty shrub couldn't hold me up. "Can you—try this on your own?" I made a real effort not to swear; the monster probably picked up enough anger without me spitting it at him. "Jus'—let your damn—s-sand move along the ground. Walk on it if you have to."

I guess the last part was too much like an order for that damn redhead; brown-gold flicked toward me so fast it was a blur. Cursing under my breath, I tried to stumble back and almost hit the ground.

Gaara's face was set in ice when I glimpsed it, but I focused more on the tidal wave bearing down on me as I scraped my arms on the tree bark. Fishnet snagged and tore when I scrambled sideways—and then the damn stuff just _stopped_.

I glanced back at Gaara, regaining a scowl as quickly as I could to replace my wide-eyed fear. His pale bandaged face bore the faintest strains of frowning in concentration. He was making a real effort not to kill me.

Well wasn't that encouraging. The blind monster wanted me alive to lead him home.

He turned away, empty hidden eyes back toward Suna. I slumped against the tree in trembling relief, then straightened and tottered after him.

Damn ungrateful _leech. _

A few short minutes later, Gaara tripped, unsteady in his experiment with walking on his own. Startled, I yanked every damn speck of sand I could reach up to catch the falling demon, ripping chakra out of empty stores to force the dry earth into obedience.

The darkness came up on me so fast I didn't have time to see it before I was out.

-/-

When I woke, I was moving. A quick, bleary survey informed me that Baki was carting me along like luggage, though Gaara could have easily carried me in his sand. That's gratitude for you. Then again, I didn't want either one of them near me. Repulsed, I squirmed. Baki dropped me. I grumbled as a couple of loose twigs splintered beneath my hand and a stone dug into my knee, then scrambled up. The forest was growing dark again, casting the net of shadows from the foliage in stark relief. Would we stop for the night? Probably not. Not since I'd been sleeping all day. Damn it.

Frowning, I looked toward Gaara, who seemed not to notice that I was standing on my own again. Baki kept going as well, striding right on past me. The knees of the redhead's pants were scuffed and threadbare, stained with a cloud of dirt. Around us, the trees were growing thicker, closer together; we'd moved deeper into the forest. Gaara'd kept moving, this whole time. The damn boy'd kept going, and I guess I could see the confidence, the paces he took that were steadier. Sand flurried in constant motion beneath his feet, rippling like a school of golden brown fish. Fried fish.

Even as I watched, his shoulder scraped on a tree he moved too close to. He flinched sideways, crashing into another trunk. Lurching backwards, he fell, landing haphazardly. If I'd been with my own damn team, I would've laughed. As it was, it wasn't a bit damn funny. Not in the least.

Tentatively, then roughly as I found it replenished, I tugged on my chakra. My sand, oh so obedient when I wasn't ordering it around, had streamed back into its pouch while I was unconscious. A damn good thing, too, because I don't think I could've called it after me over the distance we'd traveled since I left it. For the first few chakra applications, the handful of dust just trembled where it huddled, blatantly refusing to leave its shelter. Snarling, I dragged it out, pinching my fingers over the pouch and pulling them upward. A trickle of sand followed reluctantly, and I flung my hand wide, spraying the grains into the air.

They danced wildly for a moment, refusing to go where I ordered, and then drifted lazily toward Gaara. Curling around his shoulders as he stood back up, they gently nudged him away from the tree he was getting too close to, prodded him through a gap, guiding his top now instead of his feet.

This took a little less chakra, a bit less concentration, than watching his every step. If I walked just behind him—a damn scary notion, but a plausible one—our paths would be the same, and I would have to avoid the same trees as he. I guess it would work.

We continued like that for days. I forced Baki to stop early every damn night; he was furious every damn night, too, but what the hell else could I do? Gaara learned to watch his feet and I watched the rest of him. I was the only one who used eyes.

The trees were thinning, letting in more and more light. I was sick of soldier pills, of roots and damn berries. Would've been sicker if Baki, less versed in woodlore than I, had succeeded in feeding us those poisonous berries. He claimed it was an accident, but I was pretty damn sure he'd never actually admit to making a mistake. He was just trying to off us both, I bet. Damn good thing I recognized the stuff before it was too late.

Once, a quartet of bandits attacked us, spreading out in a circle as the forest gave way to tall grass. Gaara took them down without blinking. He would have even if he could still blink. I walked on the other side of Baki for a while after that. The grass grew sparser, tougher, until it was growing out of sand. Gaara didn't need much help to walk anymore. Occasionally, his clumsy feet found a divot that he stumbled in, and I did my best to catch him. It was damn hard. Surrounded by all this sand, my own handful wanted to run off and be free. If I lost the stuff, I'd never get it back; I'd have to start over, and ten years' worth of blood would take a long time to build up again.

The grass turned shorter, and thinner, until it faded away altogether and I stepped into the desert for the first time in ten years.

Of course, the sun had been beating down on us since we'd left the cover of the trees, but as we touched sand, it seemed to strengthen, as if it knew we were home. After ten years, most people'd make a place their home, love it and never want to leave it, but I'd clung to ancient ideas. _This _was how weather was supposed to be. Hot, hot and dry during the day, like an oven, baking us all to perfection; and icy at night, cooling us off. Baki, frowning, thrust a canteen into my face; I snatched it and looped it around my belt. It was growing heavy, weighed down by water and sand and Eiji's mask. Baki growled that I better not get dehydrated; smirking, almost laughing, I took a swig of it just to make him happy. I was in a damn good mood. I was home.

Before I'd had more than a moment to take in the golden ocean spread out across the horizon, we had walked into a sandstorm.

I sputtered, coughed, and swore, trying to figure out what the hell was going on through squinted eyes. The sand spun around Gaara, an out of control cloud of flies flinging themselves about him. Of course. He was on familiar ground now, back in his element; he would no longer need my help walking. If necessary, the desert would flatten itself before him, like a glittering gold carpet before a god.

The rest of us pitiful humans had to trudge through the soft unstable waves without help.

At that point, I damn well didn't care. Hot sand sloshed into my sandals; sweat painted wet tattoos along my cheeks and plastered my hair to my face. Ten years after being dragged away by my mother, I'd come home.

My mother. Caught up in Gaara's troubles, I'd forgotten about her. Damn it.

I'd left my mother behind.

Well, who cared? Plenty of shinobi didn't have families.

I'd just be one of them.

-/-

Suna came into view soon after. The desert rolled with dusty hills and small dunes, but they couldn't hide the fortress of Sunagakure for long. However, the desert is vast, and though Gaara'd picked up the pace, actually reaching the city still took a damn while.

When we got close, that was when I started to panic.

I kept my half smirk, half scowl, as best I could, but inside, fear roiled about like the epicenter of an earthquake. I still called the place home, but I didn't know a damn thing about it anymore. Was shaved ice stand I'd visited as a child, begging mother for coins and sugar, still in the same place? Was it even there at all? Did my childhood friends still live in the same places? Would they remember me? If they did, would they look down on me, a shinobi of Konoha, and not really of Suna at all? I didn't care a whit for fashion—I was a shinobi and wore whatever the hell I wanted—but what was in style? How stupid would I look if I didn't know?

I was walking into this city as blind as Gaara. Blinder, because I didn't have anybody to lead me. Nobody at all.

-/-

The stone cliffs loomed high above us as we approached; sentries gathered on the step-like ledges cut into their surface to make damn sure we were who we should be, and to kill us if we weren't. A few more steps and I could have reached out and touch the warm stone, worn smooth by years of howling wind. My fingers tingled with the urge; unbidden, my sand rose to twist behind my head, as if it, too, knew it was home.

I started to take a step forward, but that damn Baki stopped me, latching onto my belt to hold me in place. Twisting free, I spun, scowling at him for all I was worth. Once again, he was holding something out to me.

The visible side of his mouth curled sourly. "Wear this," he ordered, as if I didn't know that's what I was supposed to do with the damn thing. My eyes seemed permanently latched to it, drawn to the symbol engraved in metal like a tombstone's epitaph. Except this wasn't marking a death. It was marking a birth.

A Sungakare _hitai-ate_, such as I had never worn. Something that would prove I belonged to my home.

I snatched it away from Baki as if his touch would defile it, like he might take it back. I was past hoping he'd rescind the offer. Hell, of course I missed Eiji. And yeah, Raiyo. But they damn well weren't home. Here was.

Still, my damn traitorous fingers trembled as I tugged the knot out of my Konoha headband. Baki's hand still stretched toward me, waiting for me to place my temporary life in his palm so he could dispose of it. Hell if I'd let him throw the past away.

Holding the Konoha _hitai-ate _in my teeth, I tied the Suna one around my head. Then I knotted the ends of the Konoha cloth together, shoving one end through my belt so it hung there, one more burden around my waist. Baki gritted his teeth and looked ready to protest; I ignored him, pivoting away, making a mental note to get a stronger belt.

With two cities, two homes, proudly displayed, I marched forward to face the future.

I left Gaara in the dust.


	12. Ghosts

**A/N:** Extra long chapter to make up for the horrible horrible horrible long delay. I am so so sorry. But here it is at last, Christmas morning, and I thank you all for your most wonderous patience. (: Happy Christmas, dears.

-/-

Fingertips brushed against rough stone as I stepped into the stone fortress of Suna. Caught by the memory, I drifted sideways and leaned my head against the rock, feeling jagged edges press into my skull. I could've fallen asleep there and drifted through warm dreams, but Baki had no patience for my reminiscence; he grabbed the back of my shirt and dragged me forward. Growling, I wrestled free and ran a few steps to get back ahead of him.

Gaara trailed behind. I offered him no second thought, no hint of sympathy or responsibility. I owed him nothing, and damn it, I was _home_.

The first thing that hit me across the heart nearly crippled me. I froze in my tracks, long enough that Baki shoved me forward again as if I were a slow-moving slave getting in his way. I might as well have been, the way I worked for Gaara without gratitude or pay.

But no, here was my reward: coming home.

It was a reward that now seemed weathered and old, and that is what struck me like a tangible blow. Erosion chipped away at the sturdy walls; cracks slithered across stone like insidious snakes eating away at my home. Suna had grown worn and weary without me.

But still it bustled. Even this close to the edge of the city—even in the heat of the day, which siphoned people off the streets—shoppers wound their way through the hive. Without hesitation, I plunged into the sparse swarm—it would buzz frenetically in the early morning or the evening—trying to lose Baki and Gaara behind me. I refused to let it matter that they were the reason home; I refused to look back.

Damn Baki, though, is a jōnin. He moved through the crowd like a ninja and closed his claws in the back of my clothing, pulling me up short and choking me. I swore violently.

"You have a mission," he said coldly. "If you go anywhere, you take Gaara with you."

"What the hell?" I gave him a look as if my steely stare could change his mind. The expression he offered in return was one I could not hope to compete with. Making a noise of disgust under my breath, I called, "Gaara. How do you feel about some damned delicious shaved ice?"

His face turned toward my voice and followed it like a trained dog as he struggled to catch up with Baki and I. I waited a few moments longer, keeping my cool, and inwardly straining to run off and see what I had missed—and what I still knew.

When Gaara drew even with me, I threw caution to the wind. Leveling him a stare that he couldn't see but which ordered him not to dare kill me, I coiled my uninjured hand around the demon's white sash—no longer pure as snow, but splattered with dried blood like constellations—and dragged him off. No way in hell could I muster enough patience to delay for his ponderous, blind gait.

My hand didn't remain uninjured for long. Sand attacked it like a ravaging hound; I clung grimly on, until I felt battered skin give way to bone. Jerking my shredded digits back, I retreated, cradling my hand against my chest and reflecting on the benefits of red clothing.

I could now do nothing with either left or right, but at least the blood stinging my tattered skin would not stain my outfit.

"If you kill me," I said, voice low and furious, "I will come back to haunt you until you go mad and die." I cared little for the fact that he was half-mad already; I merely needed to get my point across.

"I am haunted by a thousand ghosts," he snarled, "whose living selves meant nothing to me; and whose laments still fail to move me. One more spirit in the crowd will make no difference."

"No," I countered, "my spirit will. Phantoms take a form that you can see; but you are _blind_, damn it. And the ghosts don't know that, so they stand there and think that you see and that they're tormenting you. But _I _know the truth. You are blind as a damn bat, so I will make enough noise to raise the Devil out of Hell and you will never sleep again."

"I do not sleep," he growled. "If I did, you would see what Hell looked like."

-/-

Lost.

Of course I would be lost; I hadn't been here in ten damn years. But I hated to admit it. I wove my sand in with Gaara's to guide him and pretended I knew exactly where I was going.

He'd lived here his whole life, and more recently than I; he may have known where to look. But he was blind, and _looking_ wasn't high on his list of skills at present. My pride sure as hell wouldn't have let me ask him for help anyway.

I decided a rooftop would afford an excellent view of Suna's streets; but with two useless hands, I wasn't going to be climbing anything any time soon. I scouted out a house with a stairway all the way to a rooftop cactus garden and headed for the steps, telling Gaara to wait behind. He didn't want to obey; he wanted to kill me again, still, but I withdrew my sand and he tripped on the stone streets and pressed himself back into darkness.

Halfway up the stairs, an empty flower pot collided with my shoulder, bursting into red-clay shards like blood-stained glass. Cursing, I glanced around for my attacker to find a woman standing in the door of the house, glaring up at me, another pot at the ready.

Damn it. Shinobi didn't get flower pots thrown at them; if a shinobi were on a roof, the roof's owners knew damn well there was a damn good reason for it and let them be. But of course, no one around here knew I was a shinobi anymore; I'd been gone ten years.

I ran up the stairs, ducking two more pots, unable to shake the feeling that Gaara was laughing at me somewhere below. The woman in the doorway rivaled my swearing with curse words I had never heard, her furious voice cowing me into silence instead of defiance and flight instead of fight.

I really didn't belong here anymore.

-/-

I had to cross altogether too many rooftops before the damn hag's cawing faded out; by that point, I had left Gaara far behind. Muttering, I tried to calculate a roundabout route back to him, but figured I would only end up lost again; I would have to suffer further humiliating bruises to return.

For several minutes, I toyed with the delightful idea of leaving him to rot. I tossed it out for a multitude of reasons, but let the pleasure of contemplating it remain.

Then I went to work on finding the shaved ice man.

Other rooftop gardeners glared kunai through my form as I hopped from building to building, but my _hitai-ate_ were visible from this distance, so they left me alone. They probably thought I was some imposter from Konoha, too damn stupid to take off my home village's symbol, but I left the Leaf Village headband tied in place at my belt. Ten years hadn't given me a new home, but it meant too damn much to just throw away with the trash.

I carefully memorized my path above Suna, surveying the streets and deciding I could maybe take the low road back to Gaara. That is, if I ever figured out where the hell I was going.

I slowed and stopped on an empty roof, realizing that my aimless hopping would only get me more lost. A young woman on the neighboring house's crown, gently petting a cactus between its needles, had glanced up at me and gone back to her business without a scowl; hesitantly, I jumped the gap and approached her.

"I'm sorry," I said, keeping a civil tongue in my mouth, "but do you know where the vendor who sells shaved ice is?"

She raised her blue-violet eyes to me and her gaze went first to the Sunagakure _hitai-ate_ tied around my head—the one placed where a forehead protector rightfully _should _be placed: across the forehead. "He's over by Kaido's right now," she informed me softly, fingers brushing through a curtain of dark hair.

Ora Kaido's café had been around a hell of a long t ime; the woman who owned the place, Kaido, was known to take on most anyone desperate for a job, as long as she thought them desperate enough. I remembered the place well—but not how to get there.

I chewed my lip a moment, then gestured to the Konoha _hitai-ate_ at my waist. "I haven't been here in ten years," I explained. "Could you tell me the way from here?"

My informant looked startled. "How long?"

"Ten years," I repeated bitterly, dropping my gaze. "I was five."

"I…" She paused, then shook her head. "I'm not going to ask," she said, and gave me directions to the place I wanted to go.

With thanks on my lips like birds fluttering free, I leapt to the dusty streets. The young woman watched me for a moment—I could feel her deep eyes on me—then turned away, offering her cactus a drink and apparently forgetting me.

Taking a drink of my own, I concentrated on recalling the route to Gaara. I would have to hold it in my head, in reverse, as well as the path to the shaved ice man, but after learning to navigate the mazelike forests of Konoha, I thought I could manage it.

At last my feet crunched over shards of broken pottery, alerting me of my return to my starting point. My eyes searched first the doorway of that damn woman's house, and then the roof, to make sure I wouldn't be facing any more red clay barrages. She was notably absent; I swore under my breath in relief and shifted to seek Gaara instead.

The shadows hid him well; and for a moment, I froze like a startled deer, terrified that he had moved and now rampaged through the village, killing blindly. But the darkness altered like a wind catching an eddy of fog; I muttered his name, and Gaara stepped free, drawn by my voice.

"You were absent… for a while." His tone was sour, disapproving, but calm; for once, he did not growl at me like an animal—like a demon.

I shrugged out of habit, though he couldn't see. "Been a long damn while since I've been here. I didn't know where I was going. Let's go now, before I forget the way."

With an effort, I slipped my sand into his, pivoted, and went off the way I'd come.

A flower pot crashed against a wall behind us, bursting like fireworks turned to flakes of dried blood and clattering to the ground.

-/-

The shaved ice man had as many flavors as I remembered.

For lack of a name, the title had started to take on capital letters in my head. No, he wasn't just the shaved ice man—he was The Shaved Ice Man, same as the Kazekage or the Council. He was that damn important, and he had just as many flavors as I remembered.

I had to list them off for Gaara; with just under a hundred, it took a hell of a long time. My throat grew hoarse; I coughed, suddenly looking forward even more to the prize at the end of the road as I read the sign with all its infinite glory. I should have just made Gaara go without.

The Shaved Ice Man must have been a ninja in another life; without manipulation of space, there was no way he could fit a hundred flavors into the tiny cart he wheeled around. As a child, I'd taken it for granted; now, I caught myself wondering. A tiny part of my mind reached out to sense for sense for chakra use, but found none in the pushcart of syrup and ice.

As I droned on about alphabetical flavors, I chose my own. Passing over 'Wild Poisonberry'—really only wild cherry and strawberry, it had given me a thrill as a child—with a shudder and a sour thought for Baki, I settled on an earlier option from the list: Tiger's Blood. Strawberry and coconut, with a savage pride from the name.

I expected Gaara to choose the same—it seemed his style. But after a long pause, as if he were waiting for me to tell him he couldn't have any, he muttered two words: "Black cherry."

Used to be, I liked to guess all the flavors my friends would pick on the day we were given coins and sent off to get shaved ice, a group of four- and five-year-olds with probably one ten-year-old to keep an eye on us. Since I had no friends here anymore, and I'd already guessed wrong with Gaara, I occupied myself choosing syrups for the young woman who'd given me information and the moron woman who'd thrown things at me. 'Cactus Juice'—fruit punch, peach, and blueberry—I decided for the former while The Shaved Ice Man prepared our treats; and 'Bug Juice'—strawberry and banana—for the latter. Or maybe lemon. Oh, hell—definitely lemon.

I dug into my kunai holster, where I kept my coins—and came up short. Damn D-Rank missions didn't pay much. Damn it. I glanced at Gaara and asked if he had any money—but he didn't. Of course not. The Kazekage's son wanted for nothing but a heart.

Since I couldn't give him that, he might as well have wanted for nothing at all. But right now, he was going to want for black cherry shaved ice if he didn't cough up something.

"Forget it, of course," said The Shaved Ice Man. "Pay me next time." And he gave me a smile like he was welcoming me home.

"Thank you," I said, accepting his gift. I held out the black cherry ice to Gaara, who didn't see that I was offering it to him. Finally, I wrapped the cup in sand and floated it toward him; sensing its presence, sensing a threat, his own sand whipped toward the innocent, syrup-coated frozen water. Gritting my teeth, I forced my recalcitrant grains to pull back; their movement caused Gaara's attack to slow, a spray of gold clashing with the cup but doing no damage.

"It's just your damn shaved ice," I said, and he raised a hesitant hand to curl around the thick paper cylinder, sand armor dampening as it touched condensation. Spoon poised over my blood, I glanced back at The Shaved Ice Man, who watched far calmly than I would have ever expected.

"What's your name?" I asked.

His lingering smile widened. "It would be better, of course," he said, "that you always remember me as The Shaved Ice Man. Because that, of course, is what I am."

-/-

Sunako had left him alone in the shadows, a place he had grown unaccustomed to. Once, he swung alone, played alone, and hid from the children who feared him. He'd become a ghost, haunting the playgrounds.

As a demon, recanting love, he'd never bothered to hide. She'd put him back in that darkness, and he hated her for that. Aroused by the hate, the Shukaku growled for her death.

But he fought the Ichibi back, much as he hungered to let it loose. He didn't know why he didn't let it have its way. Sands knew he wanted to, wanted it as much as he'd ever wanted anything.

What he did know was this: He hated her. She had left him in the dark for a long time, and he had started to fear she would not come back. _Fear_. He should have been pleased to be on his own again, but it had made him nervous.

And for that, he hated himself, too.


	13. Prelude to an Asylum

**A/N: **HAPPY GAARA'S BIRTHDAY! :D

-/-

Through a mouthful of syrup and chill, I muttered, "Gaara, there anywhere you want to go?"

"No." Short, sharp, like a kunai through the heart.

"Damn," I grumbled, because I wanted to explore, learn my way back around the maze of sand and stone. Well, he hadn't said he _didn't _want to go.

"I'm going to wander then," I told him aloofly, as if pretending not to be scared of him meant I could give him orders.

A frown pulled his pale face down, rippling the bandages across his eyes like snow tossed into dunes by the wind. "I _refuse_," he hissed, "to… _follow_ you like a dog on a leash."

I don't know what the hell made me say it. A death wish, a burning desire to see how the hell far I could push him before he killed me? But the anger flared on my tongue like matches and the words tasted like ash as they fell from my lips.

"Why not?" I snapped. "That's what you did the whole damn way from Konoha to here."

My vision went gold as a hundred thousand tiny flies buzzed through my sight, whirling around me at blurring speeds. Of a sudden, the grains of sand stopped in midair and shot toward me, coalescing into a blanketing snake that squeezed air and blood from my body as if I were a sponge being forced to relinquish its prizes.

A small crowd gathered around us, stopping up the street like a blockage in a drain. Faces painted with curiosity or fear watched Gaara kill me by inches, and not a damn one of them did a damn thing to help.

I didn't know what to do, so I kept talking.

"Go on," I grated, voice rasping with the pain and suffocation as his sand coiled around my throat. "Kill me, in front of all those people. I'll die right now, and I'll be buried in the sand. That's good enough for me, because I'm back home, and I frikkin' _love _it here. What about _you?"—_I choked—"What do _you _love enough to die for?"

Not the right accusation to make if I wanted to live. He slowly crushed my windpipe, until I was sure I would never speak normally again. Well, no, I damn well wouldn't if I was dead.

"Do it," I ordered, voice scraping out of my throat, hardly more than a hoarse whisper. Either he was mesmerized by my words or he preferred to murder slowly, drawing every last ounce of agony from his victims; I didn't know him well enough to be sure. Thank Kami. "Meet their damn expectations. They think you're a damn monster whose going to kill me, so you damn well better not let them down." Black spots flicked in my vision like marks of the plague while the desert throttled me.

The sand fell, sliding away like the grains in an hourglass as if all the life had gone out of it. I collapsed with it, and then the world turned black.

-/-

For one terrifying moment upon awakening, I thought that damn Gaara had made me blind. But then my eyes unstuck, and I found myself facing an aggravated Baki.

"You are useless," he said.

"Good," I responded gutturally, wincing as the words tore their way free of my vocal cords. "Am I off the damn mission?"

"No."

"Damn it." I coughed, restraining a whimper at the excruciating pain that ensued. "I am not impressed with your bedside manner."

"And I am not impressed with you at all."

"Well I didn't make the damn choice to take the damn job!" I snapped, seeing his fists clench in anger and reflecting on my death wish. "I was just doing what I was damn well supposed to as a _shinobi_ in the _Chūnin Exams_: _fight._" My voice kept fading out as I spoke, making me sound like a television with bad reception, but I forged furiously on. "I sure as hell didn't know I was signing up to be snatched from my squad like a bird from its nest if I badly injured my opponent. What would you have done if I killed him, made me take his place? If anything, you damn well _should_ be impressed with me: I took out your village's best damn weapon—"

His fist slammed down, rattling the tray at my bedside and knocking over the cup of water resting within reach. Hastily, I caught it before it had spilled more than half its cold contents on me, then gulped the rest, grateful for the soothing of my raw throat.

I strained for the last drop, then reluctantly set the white Styrofoam back down and met Baki's seething gaze. "What do you know about the jinchuuriki?" he demanded, voice low and dangerous.

"Very damn little," I said loftily, words scratching their way out like a cat escaping its cage.

"Ask Gaara."

"No damn way," I barked. "I'm not going near him again. Who the hell cares what he knows about the jinchuuriki?"

"You will go near him," said Baki quietly, ruthlessly, because you have been assigned this mission and you cannot back out."

"If I'm on a mission," I flared, "where the hell is my pay?"

"Who do you think is funding your hospital visit?" he responded icily as he stood abruptly to leave. At the door, he paused and turned back.

"You may have been," the jōnin said. "His replacement."

And as he walked away, down the sterile white hospital hallways, I thought I heard him mutter, "You might be yet."

-/-

I spent the next few hours engaged in a rare activity: practice.

One medic-nin and the occasional distressed nurse tried to talk me out of it, but I irritably informed them that my injuries had nothing to do with my chakra supply. Either intimidated by my hoarse, torn-up voice or swayed by my superior logic, each left me alone to drag grains of sand painstakingly through the air.

The medic-nin, returning to suffuse my battered windpipe with chakra once more, did lose her temper when she found me cutting into my palm for the blood the sand craved. I tried to reason with her—for about ten seconds before I started yelling—but she confiscated my kunai as if I were a child and threatened to strap me to the damn bed if I did that again in her hospital.

I was pretty sure the hospital wasn't owned or run by this diminutive brunette, but she was damn scary. Muttering darkly, I agreed to her terms.

Delicate fingers touched the skin of my throat. Cool blue chakra slid down my airway, which felt like sandpaper had been dragged through it. The energy gathered at the bruises and cuts around my neck, helping them to fade a shade or two more than the first healing had.

That damn Gaara had really taken an exception to my voice. He'd tried to rip it out of me.

More likely it was my words he held the damn grudge against, but they were less easily torn away.

I mumbled a thanks as the medic-nin pulled back, my voice still rasping but doing so less painfully now. She gave me one last warning looking, told me she'd send a nurse with more water, and left.

Having no desire to see her return and make good on her threat, I flirted only briefly with the possibility of drawing out another kunai. Instead, I returned to moving the damn stuff with chakra only; flurries of gold sprayed out in spontaneous directions, or dropped suddenly to my sheets like birds shot from the sky. My efforts tired me quickly and I fell abruptly into sleep, sand sliding to rest in its pouch as I lost concentration and consciousness.

I dreamed I was mute. Bandages coiled around my head like ivory snakes, covering my mouth. I fought to speak, but my lips would not move; sound died in my throat.

Gaara spoke for me. His eyes were whole, orbs of seafoam pinched off from the sea and protected by moats made of the abyss. He turned to meet my gaze, looking into my eyes (which had lightened from their nut-brown to a sepia like old photographs and memories) and reading the words he saw there as if they were written across my face.

But he kept saying things completely damn different than what I wanted to come out of my mouth. _I don't need your help, _I tried to tell him; _Help me_, he told Baki, who stood nearby painting stars on his palms. _This is better, _I wanted to say; _I miss my mother, _he explained to a star-dusted sky.

_My mother is crazy!_ I screamed inside my head, but he just said, _Your mother loves you_, as if berating me for my lack of faith. Frustrated, my hands flew to my face, ripping skeins of white fabric away from my mouth, but when the world behind Gaara became a mirror I could see my lips sewn shut by a five-year-old's unsteady hand. Slowly, the redhead turned his head to meet my gaze once more; but his eyes were gone, empty holes leaking blood across milk-pale sand and I woke with terror teetering on my tongue.

This place was a cage, I decided, a cage with white walls and sterile eyes. I'd never had a problem with hospitals like some shinobi, but I guess I just hadn't spent enough damn time in them. Now I knew why I'd seen experienced jōnin fighting orders to walk through hospital doors despite red thread woven into strips of shredded skin. Why those who remembered the rules stalked into the midst of medic-nin and injury straight-faced but shaking.

Because this wasn't just a cage. It was a prelude to a damn asylum.

Well I sure as hell wasn't sticking around any longer.

Of course that short-haired brunette wasn't going to let me out. But what the hell was I a ninja for if not sneaking? Hiding was hard in the face of glaring light, but I would just try to blend in. After all, they'd shoved me into one of those damn hospital gowns, so I looked just like every other damn sick person here.

Clothes. I would have to find my damn clothes.

This turned out to be easier than expected, since they were folded up in a drawer next to the bed. I stuffed them in the front of the wisp-thin gown, tied the back tightly, and slipped out of the room.

I looked down a long hallway lined with hospital bedrooms and decided that, on second thought, I would blend in better dressed in real clothes. Patients didn't wander the hallways.

Ducking back in the door, I hastily changed back into red and black. Someone had thoughtfully beat the sand out of the folds and mended the tears in neat lines of stitches, as well as apparently replaced the bandages I wore above my sandals, but the fishnet was still hopelessly torn: Either there had been no time to replace the threads, or the seamstress who'd taken care of the rest got bored of fixing my clothes. I would have to find some time to rethread it myself in between babysitting Gaara.

For the moment, I slipped it on anyway, wincing as it scraped over tiny scabs the medic-nin hadn't found important enough to heal. Frayed black fibers brushed against my skin like butterflies landing on my arms. Twitching, I dumped the damn hospital gown on the rumpled bed and head out.

I walked as if I knew where I was going, occasionally checking room numbers ostentatiously as if I were visiting somebody. After a few minutes, as I trotted down a staircase, I untied my Sunagakure _hitai-ate _and removed the strip of brown cloth holding my hair back, letting the sandy stuff fall about my shoulders and hide the lingering marks on my throat.

They really needed to adorn this place with some paintings or something. It was bland and scary, with its ivory walls and mazelike hallways. I would find a suggestion box on the way out. 'Put some damn pictures on the walls.'

I thought I could see a desk and some patterned chairs down a hallways that indicated the hospital lobby when the brunette medic-nin poked her head out of a side room and glared at me.

"Medic-nin," she said, "is short for medic _ninja_. And we aren't genin, so no genin is going to get past us. Get your butt back up to your room and wait to be discharged. You'll be waiting at least another day," she added, raising an eyebrow. I thought I detected relish in her voice. "That's what we do to people who try to skip out. Now go." She disappeared back through the door.

"I don't remember the way," I said sullenly.

"Yes you do," I heard from inside the room. "Don't make me escort you."

Scowling, I pivoted on my heel and stomped back upstairs. I was ignored the whole way.

-/-

I thought about going out an open window, but I got a blonde medic eyeing me severely and slid back into my own room with a sour look instead. Flopping onto my thin mattress, I kicked my feet against the metal legs and wondered what the hell kind of shinobi I had become. Or had I always been like this?

Laying back so that my head hung off the other side of the bed, I stared at the wall and waited for someone to come tell me what to do. After all, good shinobi have to know how to follow orders.

-/-

They finally did let me out the next day, but only once Baki had come to collect me. Apparently he didn't trust me not to skip out on my duties. He was damn right: I would have gone off around the city if he hadn't shown up. Damn it, I was looking forward to that, too. What the hell was I supposed to do locked up in a house with Gaara? I'd be back in the hospital within the hour. He might as well have just come to me.

I breezed into the Kazekage's Mansion as if it were a clothes store, paying no mind to the furtively placed guards I knew Baki would order to let me through. Good thing those guards couldn't read my damn thoughts, because I was seriously considering finding the damn Kazekage and giving him a piece of my mind. Look what he'd turned his son into, look where he'd gotten me. This was his damn fault.

Instead, I just wandered around, until Baki caught up with me and dragged me off to find Gaara. "You two could have at least frikkin' visited me at the hospital," I said irritably, though I'd been there two days and liked nothing more than not seeing my captors for that time.

I received an aggravated jerk of my arm in response and an increase of pace that forced me to nearly trip over my own feet to keep up. Damn ungrateful Baki. Most of this was his fault, too.

And of course, none of the blame belonged to me.


	14. Nothing But Demons

**A/N : **I AM A FAILURE.

OTL

Please forgive me. This chapter is extremely short. But I figured it was best I get something out, rather than silence.

I want to explain:

Life is trying its best to kill me right now.

This means the chapters are going to be slow. For all those who've stuck with me through my snail imitations, I have to thank you once again. Your faith that I will keep going keeps me going. I know it's hard, to come back to a chapter when it's been months since the last, but I need you to know that I WILL NOT QUIT. If it takes me fifty years, I will finish _The Obsession_ and _Sand Child_.

I want to write, you have no idea. After watching a bunch of episodes of Shippuuden, I want to write more RIGHT NOW. I just... I'm trying, alright? And if you're waiting, you are the best on this planet. I love you guys so much.

Thank you thank you thank you ad infinitum.

-/-

Instead of knocking, like I should have, I swept the door open and strode in, nearly receiving a faceful of sand for my troubles. Yeah, going to be back in the damn hospital in the same damn room in the next thirty minutes.

"You should knock," he growled, sightless eyes trained on me, and despite my similar thoughts, I immediately flared like a fed fire.

"You should grow the hell up and stop taking everything so personally," I snapped. "Your father's the damn Kazekage, not you."

Baki must have been waiting just outside the door, listening in like a bird perched in the rafters, because he pulled me back out of the room by my collar to save me from certain death. I wasn't sure if Gaara was upset about the insult to him or his father, but I damn well didn't care. They both deserved it.

"Watch your tongue, Izari," ordered Baki. I glared up at him.

"Or what, you'll fire me?"

"Or it'll be ripped out by the sand." He shoved me forward, releasing my clothing, and turned to go. "Don't die; I cannot afford your replacement."

"Then don't replace me," I muttered, stalking back in to face my demons. "Let the damn child stand on his own two feet."

Wary as a mouse afraid of an owl, I took in the room. It appeared to be empty, except for a mashed couch shoved up against a rough stone wall and a hard wooden stool in the corner by the door. Just what the hell had Gaara been doing in here? It was boring as a grave. Then again, what the hell _could _he do? Most forms of recreation were out on account of you needing eyes to enjoy them.

He sat on the damn floor, cross-legged. No one had even guided him to a seat? Damn, these people had the consideration of a teacup. Without the tea.

"Too much thinking makes every damn one crazy," I announced, inching around the room toward the window on the far wall. Light filtered in, catching motes of disturbed sand and dust and tossing them back into the air; but no breeze stirred through the empty frame, and somebody was going to pass out. Even if I _liked_ the damn heat.

Didn't know what I was going to do at the window—it wasn't big enough to be an escape route—but I'd figure it out when I got there.

Gaara didn't seem to realize I was moving, albeit hesitantly as a newborn foal. His bandaged face remained focused on the spot where I had last spoken. Uncomfortably, I cleared my throat; startled, the sand convulsed, then settled, like a creature woken suddenly from sleep.

"Is this your room?" I inquired, irritated that my voice still came out with a hint of roughness. Either the medic-nin of Suna didn't know how to do their damn jobs or Baki had told them to punish me for not doing _my _damn job. I was betting on the latter. "It doesn't measure up to the Kazekage's standards. He only pays for the best, I think."

Silence a moment longer, the span of a butterfly's breath, with Gaara's blank face turned toward me where I stood by the window.

"You're not being paid," he said.

I gritted my teeth. "I'm being paid in damn hospital bills," I responded irritably. "I guess that makes me the best at getting hurt."

Pivoting, I stuck my head out the window, looking to both sides of the stone as if it would give me ideas for widening the airway. No miraculous window-opening devices popped out at me, so I pulled back in and glared around as if it were the room's fault it was so damn stifling in here.

"Can we go somewhere the hell else?" I demanded. "It's hot in here."

"…This is the desert." I could almost hear the unspoken 'fool' after his words.

"And I haven't been here for ten damn years." Scowling, I leaned back against the wall, folding my arms. He began to infuriate me again, and I didn't really want to visit the scary brunette medic-nin. My eyes fell on the discarded cone from Gaara's shaved ice, still sticky with syrup reside and crushed like a stomped-upon moth on the floor beside him. He must have enjoyed it then, or dumped it out on the ground.

If I wanted to avoid injury, I should have just kept my damn mouth shut. But talking seemed all I could do. "_Is _this your room, then?"

"No."

"Then why the hell can't we leave it?" A new thought occurred to me, one I liked about as much as I would like another hospital visit. "Is this _my _room?"

He appeared to ponder this for a minute. "I… do not think so."

"Oh. Then let's get the hell out of here."

He seemed disinclined to move. Or even speak. It was as if some damn fool sculptor had immortalized Gaara and left the artwork sitting in this unused room because nobody wanted it. I might as well be convincing a rock to budge, and have a conversation with me while it was at it.

I chewed my lip for a second, then started forward. As I advanced, my scandals skidded on grains of sand scattered apart from the golden moat that surrounded Gaara. Alerted to my approach, the sand roused itself. Eyeing it nervously, I said, "I'm coming closer." Changed my route slightly. "I'm going around behind you."

Scarves of sand writhed about my ankles, coiling and uncoiling like curious snakes. I flinched the first time, and any subsequent time the snakes bit deeply, but forced fear beneath a shell.

I stood directly behind Gaara now, centimeters from his cracked and heavy gourd. I was willing to bet he grew quickly tired of carrying that burden on his back, but untying a knot he was accustomed to untying seemed like the kind of thing even fumbling fingers working blind could do. If he'd wanted the damn thing off, he could _take_ the damn thing off.

Oh hell, I hated moving like this, as if I were walking on splintering ice. Didn't blind people have heightened senses that told them where every damn thing was? I guess those took time to build up.

Very, very slowly, as if time had caught me and refused to let me fall, I dropped into a crouch directly behind Gaara. "Keep your head," I ordered. "I'm going to untie this."

He flinched as my hands came close, but I found the knot in the red-silk sash without much effort. It slid undone, dropping the gourd backwards. I tried to catch it and hold it upright, but the weight of it was greater than I expected. It toppled to the floor, sprouting an array of fresh, spiderwebbed cracks.

"Damn," I said, standing up and glaring at the thing, sash held as limply as a crown of dead dandelions. Luckily, I'd managed to scramble back fast enough that the gourd had missed my toes. I thought about apologizing, but just said, "Damn" again instead.

"Stop," he commanded, voice little more than a hiss. "Expand your vocabulary."

PFFT.

Seeing nothing better to do with the length of scarlet cloth that had held Gaara's gourd to his back, I looped it around my waist for storage purpose, hiding my own thin belt. Sourly, I crossed my arms and backed up.

"Come on, let's _go_. You have no excuse to stay."

"STOP GIVING ME ORDERS." Something stirred beneath his pale skin, as if his veins ran gold with sand. They darkened back to a blue that stood out starkly against the white of his flesh.

My expression didn't soften, but I raised my hands, palms out, partway submissive. "What do you want? 'Please'?"

"I will think… for _myself._"

"Why don't you _relax_ and let yourself _dream_ for once? Hell, no wonder you don't sleep. All those thoughts keep anyone up the whole damn night."

"My _dreams_," he hissed, "are _red_."

"So's my shirt." Hell if I'd let that impress me. "Your point?"

"I—"

Our support shuddered, quaked beneath us; and I thought it was his anger breaking free and threatening to toss us into the ground as the floor cracked. The discarded gourd roll about like a disturbed pill bug until it settled into a newly-made divot at a rakish angle.

"What the hell are you doing? Stop throwing tantrums!"

"I am doing nothing!" He shot me a glare that would have frozen hell if he'd had eyes. I shoved down embarrassment.

"Then what the hell is that?"

Unperturbed by the shaking, he hadn't shifted from his cross-legged position on the fractured floor. He answered me with the same complete apathy that kept him in place like a kid who'd used too much glue on his art project, then smeared it all over and gotten stuck.

"The Kazekage lives here. He has more enemies than you have grains of sand."

"But not more than you."

The sand rippled across the suddenly-still floor. "I have the whole desert under my control."

Either some moron had taught him the fine art of hyperbole, or he was the most conceited jerk on the face of the world. I bet on option number two.

The room shuddered again and I fell sideways. This turned out to be damn good luck, because the door burst inward and a blizzard of cold steel tore through the air. A gold wall snapped up to shield Gaara; when it sank down, he was on his feet, unseeing gaze trained on the doorway.

I was at the wrong angle to see what occupied that damn doorway, but I imagine it hated Gaara. Probably wanted him dead.

I wouldn't have the opportunity to find out for sure, but I was half ready to join up.

"Did you think it would be _easy?_" the redhead snarled, grit dancing around his feet in tiny waves. "Because I can't _see _you?"

His face began to warp, bloating and flattening beneath the grimy bandages. I stared, unsettled as a bird whose nest had disintegrated beneath it. _What the hell?_

He didn't speak again, only growl out his words. "You were _wrong_. I can _smell_ you. And I know exactly where you are..."

A great arm shot out, big as my torso, taloned, and veined with blue. A strangle cry came from beyond the empty doorframe, a sunburst of blood, and a _thud_ as the body hit the floor.

Gaara, half-demon now and something I'd never seen, turned sightless eyes on me as if daring me to comment. Instead of scarred seafoam, they were faded gold stars dropped into the abyss.

He advanced on me a single step; I, crumpled on the floor, stared at him in worldless bewilderment while sand buzzed around my head in an angry, useless swarm.

A tense, silent minute later, his coat of demon fell away and he sank down to his knees.

Now was as bad a time as any. "What do you know about the Jinchuuriki?" I asked, back to the wall and no allies at my side.

"Demons," he rumbled, arms curled around his head like a child trying to block out the world. "We are nothing but demons to them."


	15. Everything and Nothing

**A/N: **AHHHH! I _just_ noticed that all the chapters had vanished the line breaks! All the different sections just blurred into one! x.x I'm going through and fixing that right now, so somebody please tell me if it's not fixed from now on…. XD

**MORE IMPORTANTLY. **You have the most wonderful Talye Kendrin to thank for this chapter. Why? BECAUSE SHE'S TURNING _SAND CHILD_ INTO A MANGA. This was just so magnificent that I was inspired to start writing again.

Please check out the first few pages here: http:/talye05(dot)deviantart(dot)com/art/Sand-Child-title-page-165419156

-/-

What threw me right the hell off was the 'we.'

Children on the playground threw around words like 'monster' and even 'demon'; they could never wrap their tongues around 'Jinchuuriki.' Was that what Gaara was saying? He _was _a demon, like those damn little kids had said?

When I'd thought about Gaara over the past years, my memories had gone sour. I'd extended a hand and he'd turned it down, left me hanging, never shown up to accept it. Konoha had its very own demon-child; and Naruto was the nicest damn kid any fool had ever known, so bullied children damn well could turn out all right.

Hell, I bet that made Naruto Jinchuuriki, too. If I was interpreting Gaara's words correctly. Course, I had to make sure.

"We? We're not talking about _we_, we're talking about _they_."

Yeah, I could have been more tactful, but why the hell bother? Damn redhead was going to hate me either way; might as well make it the way of my choosing.

"We. I." His snarl came out weak, as if he thought he should be angry but couldn't muster up the energy. "My father—"

"I don't want a damn flashback," I snapped, cutting him off at the pass. I had no desire to hear about the Kazekage who'd forced me back here, nor what other cruel things he'd put any one else through. "What do you know about the Jinchuuriki?"

"_Everything!"_ The force of the word ripped him awake, drawing his eyes upward—the last thing I wanted, since they just made me furious. "I _am_ Jinchuuriki, demon and wielder."

Though I had guessed, the pronouncement still struck me speechless. _Demon and wielder. _He didn't wield it so well, if it left him crazy and broken. Hell, maybe you couldn't wield something like that. Maybe you could only lock it away or let it use you. I'd leave an offering to the desert gods to thank them I hadn't ever had the chance to be one of _them._

"I'm a girl," I finally said, sourly, for lack of anything better to retort, "and I don't know everything about girls. I'm a damn shinobi and I don't know everything about being a shinobi. You can't know _everything_."

"Everything. Nothing." He was either being too damn rhetorical, or he had completely lost his mind. Once again, I bet on the latter. "What do you _want_ to know? What can you _possibly_ want to _know?_" His voice rose in fury and volume with each word, and I wished he had bandages over his eyes again so I wouldn't have to see their expression, like a butterfly torn in two.

"Nothing," I retorted, disrupting his tirade. "I want to stay the hell out of that world. Baki told me to ask. I wish to hell I hadn't."

"When else have you deigned to obey Baki?" Gaara hissed.

Damn, he had me there. "First time for everything," I snapped, unwilling to acknowledge his point. "Fine. Don't tell me anything." My voice dropped to a mutter. "Should've known the damn demon wouldn't know a thing."

I also should have known that goading said damn demon would have been more hazardous than jumping off a cliff. My head slammed back against the wall and my breath exploded from my lungs as a dry tidal wave crashed over me.

"Keep swearing," he growled, "and I will rip out your tongue."

Remnants of a dream flashed behind my eyes, but I shoved the broken pieces away. "What's it to you?" I demanded. "What the hell is the problem with it?"

I was absurdly relieved he'd recovered from his brokenhearted breakdown, but I preferred the malaise to not breathing. Still, I didn't think finding out his damn unreasonable aversion to cuss words was going to send him back into dejection. From the way he flinched violently, it very nearly did.

A damn tiny portion of my heart woke up and asserted itself. I snorted. "I get it," I said, feeling the urge to cross my arms despite the sand barrier wrapped across my chest. "You're just trying to order _me _around for a change. I'm sure as hell not going to take it."

The solid gold wall squeezed, almost cutting off my air entirely. My vision swam like a drunken fish while someone slowly but surely drove a spike through my skull.

"Neither. Am. I."

"Then maybe," I forced out, and I reflected as I did that it was something I sure as hell didn't want to say, "we should _both_ stop being jerks and started asking nicely, like the good little children we are."

I'm half damn sure the sand released me because he was too nonplussed to hold it against me any longer. I coughed lightly, choked, and breathed while emotions went to war beneath his bandages.

"Stop swearing," he finally growled. I couldn't tell if he was refusing my suggestion, attempting a request, or offering an ultimatum. He folded his arms to wait, a pose not near as impressively stoic as it had been when he could accompany it with an icy glare. Now, he looked more like a child trapping himself inside than a monster who stood aloof.

"Let's get the _hell_—" Sand, scattered across the cracked floor, twitched warningly; I decided sourly I might actually have to hold up my end of the bargain. Not that _he_ had, but life isn't fair.

"—_heck_ out of this room," I _suggested_ vehemently. "I'm sick and tired of its da—darn depressing décor."

Damn, I was going to have to find some new words. 'Darn' and 'heck' just didn't have the same ring.

Gaara, after a moment, hauled himself to his feet. Not bothering to resist a slightly satisfied smile—it wasn't like he could see it—I followed suit, head spinning dangerously.

As I called a few grains to myself and used them to guide Gaara to the door, I wondered why the hell no one had even come to see if we'd survived the attack.

-/-

"Now _this_ is more like it!"

Luxury decked this room like frosting on a wedding cake. It was the third one we had looked at, and we sure as hell weren't supposed to enter.

I shoved the door open and flung myself onto the extravagant bed, absently petting the silk sheets and staring up at the red sky of a draped canopy. Struck by a damn terrible thought, I sat up.

"This isn't the Kazekage's room, is it?"

"No." Gaara paused. "A councilor's."

"Heh. That's alright then."

Of course, I sure as hell didn't know what we were going to _do_ here, but at least it was a damn sight better than the blank, tiny-window room. For example, windows wide and tall as the plains bedecked one of the walls in here, and a television nearly the same size adorned another.

"We could watch TV," I suggested doubtfully, eyeing the high-quality screen and wondering what the hell one watched with a demon-host sitting beside you. Gaara edged the rest of the way into the room, sand sweeping the door closed behind him as if it were a matter of personal security.

I guess it was a toss-up between removing an entry point for an enemy and cutting off his escape. Maybe one assassination attempt was enough for him today. Hell, one assassination attempt was enough for anybody for a lifetime. How the hell many had he already suffered?

"Or, hel—_k_, we could… talk..." I tried—not very hard—to disguise my dislike of this idea. I could come up with even fewer ideas of what the hell to talk to him about than of what to watch.

"_Helk_ is not an acceptable substitute for hell," he said coolly.

"I'm doing the best I can, damn it!" I exploded. "If it's not an acceptable substitute, what the _helk_ is? It's just for emphasis, I wish to hell I knew what the hell your problem is!"

"_No_," he breathed, drawn out and half growl, "you don't."

"Don't tell me what I want!"

You'd think it would be damn easy to win a staring contest against someone with no eyes. But I could only match Gaara's sightless glare for a moment before I had to look away.

"Just tell me what your damn—p—" I recovered badly: "—No, soaking _wet_ problem with swearing is," I said stiffly, folding my arms. "I don't get it."

He hissed slowly through his teeth like a deflating snake. "It shows your stupidity, your lack of creativity… never conceiving a substitute for your rage."

I let out a short bark of a laugh that I had to struggle damn hard to prevent from turning into pure hysterics. _My _rage? A handful of cuss words here and there hardly stood up to snarling fury and murder. "You don't give a da—a whit about my intelligence, so what's the real reason? Embarrassed to be seen with a girl too stupid to use fancy words when she's mad? I get the point across, Jinchuuriki, I don't think I need to do anything else."

His hands trembled at the word, spat like an epithet in punishment for his insults. I shouldn't have said that to him, but I wanted an answer. Granted, that wasn't the way to get it, I was pretty damn sure. Oh well. _Learning_ obviously was not one of my strong points, right up there with _staying alive._ If I worked on the former I'd surely get the latter.

"Why," Gaara forced out around his anger, surprising me. Though the sands skittered around his feet, they failed to rise and attack me. Definite improvement there. Damn, was he learning faster than I was? I sure as hell was going to have to work on that. No damn way would I let that redheaded monster _beat_ me. I was too far in his power as it was.

I opened my mouth to prove just how damn _much_ faster I was learning when I discovered he was still talking. "—choose… words like blunt kunai?"

He shared my use of analogies, I noted idly, then also noted he had insulted me again. Once more I opened my mouth to protest furiously, then stopped and thought about the damn question.

Hell, I'd been angry for a good long while now. But I'd never thrown so many cusses into my sentences before… what had Eiji said? _Since I told you about the Chūnin Exams. _Since I'd realized Gaara would be trudging back into my life.

"It's you," I said without preamble. "You're the one that makes me madder than a pipe drum being played as a tambourine." I didn't know if that made sense—I didn't even know if a pipe drum was a real thing—I was just trying to outdo him in the line of analogies. "So if I could only just get the hell away from y—"

The door swung open, stealthily, gently, cutting smoothly through the beginnings of a snarl in the back of Gaara's throat. Pale hands clenched like curled up spiders at his sides, testament to his fruitless efforts to control the demon warping his features.

Baki—how long he'd been listening I had no idea, damn him—strode into the room, grabbing my arm and jerking me off the bed painfully. "You're unstable," he said coolly, grip tight enough to bruise.

"HA!" I shot a pointed look at Gaara, unable to believe he could accuse me of such a thing while Gaara's mutilated face twisted before our eyes.

"But he has an excuse," said the jōnin. "What's yours?"

I choked.

Baki wrenched me out of the way of a twist of sand and dragged me through the door, apparently leaving Gaara to rot.

-/-

The room Baki shoved me into was about six inches bigger than my closet at home. Those six inches were taken up by a tall, thin dresser that encroached only another six inches into the space. Though only a foot wide, the drawers were deep—but that hardly mattered, since I sure as hell didn't have anything to put in them.

It was comforting and depressing wrapped up into one small, dark package. No, come to think of it, it was just depressing. I'd never liked that damn closet. Had Baki looked for the smallest possible room, or had he actually furnished a closet just for me? Jerk.

"You must have better things to do than stand around closed doors making sure I don't get myself killed," I said rudely, recovering from the push and turning to face him as I narrowly avoided falling onto the knee-high bed.

"I do," he said coolly, "so stop making it necessary."

"Oh right," I said scathingly. "Because you can't afford to replace me. Why don't you just make Gaara get the hell over it and let me go home?"

"Gaara paid a heavy price to be replaced. I doubt you want to sacrifice the same."

"…the hell does that mean?" I scowled at him, bewildered, but he withdrew, snapping the door shut as he went. From the solid click accompaniment, he had locked me in.

Well, to hell with that. Stifling already in the tiny space, I carefully removed Eiji's mask from my belt and placed it on top of the dresser. I'd lost my pack several rooms back, but it was sitting in a dent in the center of my bed; I shoved it haphazardly into the second drawer down. After unknotting my Konoha headband, I hesitated for breath—and then stuffed it under my pillow. Ninja or not, I doubted Baki could steal it out from under my sleeping head. Kami help him if he tried, because I would fight like a host of wildcats to keep it.

Then I jammed my hand into my pouch and ordered the sand to move.

It stirred sluggishly, lethargic as swamp muck. I was going to need a hell of a lot more finesse than mud had to open the lock, so I extracted my hand, located a kunai, and drew blood. It dripped profusely enough to be overkill, but damn it, I was tired of doing things the slow, hard way. A spray of grains leapt jerkily into the air and slid into the keyhole, tripping pins and thwarting Baki's plans to keep me in. Smugly, I turned the knob and pressed the door open.

The idea of wandering around exploring tempted me greatly. I wanted to. I knew it would annoy the hell out of Baki if I did it. But in the end, I was too damn exhausted from dealing with Gaara all morning. If I was going to be shown to a closet room and given a break from the demon I was otherwise tied to, I was sure as hell going to take a break.

I slid a curl of sand into the hinges, so no one could walk by and shut me in again. Then I folded myself into a ball in the middle of the bed and relaxed into sleep.

I woke up too damn soon, forgetting to even wonder why the hell no one had come to make me do something again. Instead, I lie awake and speculated. The thoughts fell like dominoes, starting with: _I am not a citizen of Sunagakure_.

I was not a citizen of Sunagakure, but the Hokage had given me up. I belonged to neither village, but I was under the desert's control.

The last thought was: _They can do whatever they want with me._

When I dreamt, I had a thousand nightmares of what that entailed.

-/-

The demon rustled, roared, and subsided—content.

The Shukaku had never been content before. Morbidly pleased, sadistically satisfied, yes; but he felt as if a cat nestled in his chest, knowing smugly that it had gotten exactly what it wanted.

Gaara thought, quietly beneath the settling rage of the Ichibi, that that meant he had made the wrong choice. But he had never been able to bring himself to care.


	16. Stubborn Grey Walls

**A/N:**__OKAY. So. Here's the thing. I'm moving to Colorado to start college in, like, a week. That's why I've gotten no writing done, because I've been trying to pack up my summer and my school supplies all at once. It's probably going to be another long while until a chapter's up, because like I said, starting university and who knows how much time that's going to take over. I promise to keep writing when I can—remember, I will never give up on these stories until they're done—but please keep in mind that I will NOT BE UPDATING FREQUENTLY. I'm really sorry for the delay, but that's how it is. ;; I'm sorry I can't keep up.

-/-

I woke up with Gaara standing over me like the monster out from under the bed. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, and I let out a stream of acid curses to express my displeasure. Though he wore fresh bandages, white as a field of snow, a crease of his brow told me he was glaring at me again. Tough.

"I do _not_ like waking up to you," I grated, teeth clenched.

"You left the door open."

I thought sourly that he had a point and refused to let him drive it under my skin. "That's an open invitation to a breath of _air_, not any blind demon that wanders by."

We glared at each other for another few minutes before I remembered how pointless it was to have a staring contest with a blind boy and got tired of it. Sighing darkly, I smothered a yawn and rolled over.

Good as it was to have sand gritty against my skin, that didn't stop me from wanting to be clean. "I need a bath," I muttered, stretching—and froze, mid-motion, a horrific thought occurring to me: bathing. I wouldn't be expected to bathe him, would I, because no way in hell was that happening, not in a hundred thousand years—

I cut off the panicked train of thought. Personal hygiene didn't require eyes.

He regarded me creepily for a minute with those stupid bandages and I regretted saying anything. Then—"I will show you to the baths."

Disoriented as a deer stuffed into ninja clothing, I stared—but for once didn't argue, just barely having the presence of mind to grab my only damn change of clothes—I needed to go _shopping_—before scrambling to my feet and saluting him mockingly. "Lead on." I don't think he heard the sarcasm in my voice. Damn.

I kept my sand to myself as we walked, since the floor was flat as silk and easy enough not to trip over. I knew he'd grown up here, but as if curiosity possessed my tongue, I still couldn't help but ask, "How come you know where you're going if you're _blind?"_ How the hell could he see the hallways, turns, doors, windows, landmarks, walls?

He turned his head toward the sound of my voice and ran into a corner he'd been trying to go around. Sand rippled, unsettled, over the surface of his gourd, too late to prevent a collision. I swallowed sourly. Why didn't I feel like laughing at a sight that should have been pretty damn funny?

He stepped back, hand rising tentatively, confused, and touching his eye where the bandages had slid askew, already rimmed with night and scars that were probably going to be joined by a host of sour-bruise colors now. Almost self-consciously, he let the hand fall, like a pale dead dove, and said, "I don't… always."

"So we're lost."

"No."

"You just said we were!"

"Tell—You can tell me," he grated, in his slow, irritable accord with our bargain, "what lies behind… the nearest door. Then I will know."

Huffily, I strode past the corner he'd become briefly acquainted with and yanked open a door as solid and grey as a storm cloud. The gesture would have been a hell of a lot more impressive if it had opened as easily as I expected to; the door was heavier than it looked, and creaked open with all the expediency of a snail trapped in molasses.

Grumbling, I finally got the damn thing open and stuck my head inside.

"Da-yum," I swore, eyes sliding from irritably narrow to curiously wide, "what's this?"

Without further regard for the redhead standing in the hall, I slipped all the way into the room. White walls eaten by grunge and turned the grey of an overcast sky enclosed a series of sterile counters. Soldier-like battalions of test tubes marched over the hard white plains, their ranks broken occasionally by spidery ink scrawls of runes that looked like fleeing insects with their haphazard flourishes.

I heard Gaara stumble his way into the science/magic laboratory and turned in time to see his pale face turn sickly as he entered. "Get out," he ordered, hoarse voice straining to remain steady.

"Hell no. Don't order me around."

"Do not swear."

"How about this, smart aleck, every time you give me an order, I can give _you_ an order."

"No."

Damn, I hadn't thought that would work, but I sure wanted to try.

"Every time I give you a command," he proposed sourly, "you may swear."

"Fine," I said. "I'm keeping count."

"Now leave this room."

"Hell no! How do you even know what room it is? You sure as hell can't see it."

"That was twice."

"Tw—what?" Oh, two hells in one go, he didn't like that. Tough. "That was from an earlier order. See, I'm keeping count. What is this place?"

"You are not allowed here."

"I wasn't allowed in that council member's bedroom either, but that didn't seem to bother you a whole hell of a lot." Oh, damn, he wasn't going to buy another _keeping count_ assurance. Whatever. "I know, I know, that was a third time. Who the hell cares?"

The sand pooling around his feet shifted restlessly, and I resentfully decided I should stop antagonizing him if I wanted to live long enough to figure out what the hell was going on with this room. I probably definitely didn't want Baki having to rescue me out of it if I wanted to figure it out in peace, either. Some little bird hovered irritatingly by my ear and told me that Baki would be even less joyous about my presence here than the damn redhead trying to sweep me out the door with his wave of sand.

I skipped sideways and stilled like a Konoha icicle afraid to melt. He couldn't see me, but he could hear me like an owl heard a mouse, and that damn demon could probably smell me, too. The drive for exploration climbed onto a pedestal in my head, but survival extinct kicked it off. I could come back and figure this place out when nobody was looking.

The breath caught in my throat as a fish in a net; every iota of our attentions was focused on each other. Some sliver of sound across the room would distract him, but only the tiniest expenditure of chakra would go unnoticed. I, who scorned practice when it meant acknowledging my failure, could not move my sand without a wave of chakra, effort, and blood.

Gaara, or the demon, would know all three, and damned if I wasn't getting out of here under my own power.

I exhaled softly, a bird's wing over the desert, and noticed the sand in a glittering curtain of spray about my head.

It dropped like a shy child's gaze at being the object of attention, but I caught it by directing my focus out and away toward a rack of test tubes whose contents shimmered like oil spills. The grains zipped toward the wood and glass, which let out the tinkling cry of wind chimes as they toppled by virtue of the golden momentum alone.

Gaara pivoted toward the sound, twisting cloud of sand sweeping away from him across the floor. I made a break for the exit, leaping into the hallway and half-tempted to slam the heavy door behind him. Instead, I paused to catch my breath and stuck my head back inside.

"Aren't you coming?" I asked. "I could really use a bath."

-/-

Depressingly, I ended up having to lead the damn redhead through his own damn house, despite him claiming to know where he was. A couple of my grains of sand slipped into the golden snake rippling along the ground. Grumpily, I gave my chakra a jerk at each corridor so he'd know where to turn, and counted out loud the doors we passed in each hallway. The temptation to run him into a couple walls struck me more than once, but the desire to live through the day won out. I sure as hell wanted to know what was going on in that laboratory.

Finally, we reached a wide, short hallway that ended in a door of similar stature. Gaara indicated it as my destination, and I launched myself toward it as if I were spring-loaded, intending to yank it open until my momentum pushed it inward. Delight curled over my face as I spun inside and twisted to face him.

"No peeking," I told him smugly.

"I'm blind."

"Should make it easy then," I said scornfully, the cheer sliding away, and slammed the door in his face.

Eiji would have laughed. _No peeking_. It was a joke. Eiji would have laughed. Damn, I missed that girl.

-/-

I did _not_ get a chance to go back and check out the lab room. That damn redhead followed me every damn place, and the few times he disappeared off to kami knows where, Baki lurked at the corners of my vision. He sat in my damn _doorway_ at night, staring in or out. I tried to stay awake with him, waiting for him to drop off; I made it three nights without sleep before my eyelids were heavier than chains dipped in gold, and not once did he drift into dreamland before I fell off a cliff into it.

Two options. Option one, put him to sleep—how do you put an insomniac to sleep, drop sleeping pills in his morning tea? Not a bad plan, if I had any clue where in the hell I'd get sleeping pills. Option two, put him in the hospital. I'd done that once, and it'd landed me here. Not high on my list of repeats, thank you. And that damn Baki would know if his precious redhead were in the hospital anyway and I would be less than free.

Damn.

I kept trying to sneak away. Even tried the going where the man can't follow trick, but the powder room had no windows, and I didn't fancy drilling through a stone wall with eighteen grains of sand.

This was seriously starting to tick me off.

-/-

"I need food." I folded my arms and looked grim, wishing to hell I could get rid of him.

"I am not your slave."

"But you're the only one who knows where anything is! Even when I lived here I never came in the Kazekage's mansion. Just tell me where I can get some da—" Twitch, stop, sigh, start over:

"Please, can you tell me where I can get fed?"

"The kitchen."

"Thanks ever so."

Another plan down the damn drain, though that one admittedly hadn't been well thought out. Alright, no, none of my damn plans had exactly been genius as hell, but I was sick of being trailed like a suspect to murder. I paused and stared a moment longer, then told myself to hell with it and exploded.

"What the hell is going on? Why the hell can't I even get ten seconds to myself without you or your damn sensei as my damn shadow?"

"You… are too curious."

Well, at least he wasn't lying to me. I'd half expected some sort of evasion.

"Hell with that. Last I checked, curiosity isn't a damn sin. Or illegal!"

"Stop!"

"No! Not until you tell me what the hell is going on! I don't care what the hell your problem is, I can be just as damn stubborn as you!"

We fumed at each other until I thought the air would light on fire. Sand burbled along the ground like a Jacuzzi, feathering at my ankles; I scowled down at it, figuring Gaara wouldn't know the difference if I was glaring at him or his weapon.

"Would you please stop that?" I grated.

I probably shocked him into it, but the stuff stilled like a meerkat pausing to listen. I eyed it and focused damn hard on controlling my temper, because I did _not_ want Baki showing up here to save my neck. I was determined to get back in that room, and he sure as hell wouldn't be the one to let me.

"What's in that room?" I demanded, slowly, deliberately calm.

"Test tubes. Ink."

Oh, the sass.

"What stunning skills of observation you have for someone who's blind," I snapped. "What's it for?"

"I said… you are too curious. You are not meant to know."

"Come on, Redhead, live a little. Break some da—some crazy rules." I was wheedling. Eiji hated it when I wheedled because I sounded too desperate. From the way the sand rustled, Gaara seemed to hate it when I wheedled, too. Damn, it was like getting information out of a wooden plank.

"Do not tell me what to do."

"We both have the bossy problem, mister. Get over it."

The bandages wrinkled where his brow furrowed in anger. I was not doing the greatest job ever of keeping him cooperative.

What the _hell_, this kid was _blind_. All I had to do was walk away when he wasn't paying attention. He'd crash into some damn wall and lose me for a while. I had a ghost of an idea where the lab had been.

"Fine. I quit already." I scowled deeply and let it drop for the day. I'd wander off tomorrow when he'd had time to forget.


	17. Just So You Know

**A/N:** First day of class was today. Whew. Made it. Should really be doing homework, but here you go. ;)

-/-

I may have hated the lot of them, but that didn't make them stupid. I vowed to give it a week before I tried slipping off, but it took me a damn sight longer to succeed. Damn redhead kept _noticing_ when I tried to walk away. Blind or not, he wasn't helpless, so what the hell did they need me for? I refused to take his stumbling collisions with walls as an answer.

Even when Gaara was missing—taking a break from me or giving me a break from him, who the hell knew?—Baki damn near always watched me instead.

Finally, countless monotonous days later, Gaara vanished longer than his usual ten minutes. And Baki was nowhere in sight; I caught firefly glimpses of some other lackey on my tail.

I pretended not to notice. I pretended to drift into easy slumber. Justifying a nap in the middle of the day was no challenge—there sure as hell wasn't anything else to do. Exploring wasn't near as much fun with my own personal tail.

I don't have enough sand in my arsenal for what I wanted to do, so I had to choose fast—hands or voice.

At least this guy let me sleep with my damn door closed, instead of staring down at me. He checked in periodically, making sure I still slept. I waited until just after his assurance to move. Quiet as a butterfly's landing, I cut through the fibers of my sheets with a kunai. Equally quiet, I unlatched my door. I paused, inhaled—

—Slammed the door open and flung several grains of sand down the pine-haired guard's throat. Startled and choking, he had no defense as I punched him in the face, thanking the kami that my sand's aim had been true. Quickly, I tied his hands and gagged him with the sheets, which reminded me disturbingly of Gaara's bandages.

I rolled the guard into my room like a barrel, shut the door and locked it from the outside, and then scuttled off like a spider on fire.

I found the lablike room as easily as if I'd had a map. It's kunaimetal cold door invited me into the mystery behind, but damn it all, voices issued forth as if they were conspiring to keep me in the dark.

Good and bad news: They sounded like Baki and Gaara. Maybe I'd learn something. Maybe I'd also die.

I leaned casually against the door and tried to think of a way to hide if someone came looking for me. I suddenly felt damn vulnerable in bright red. I should graduate to a wine red, or the blue-black of stormclouds at night—but damn I liked this outfit.

"…May not work," said Baki's voice coldly through the door. I strained to hear; the barrier was damn near soundproof. "…not stable… though… demon will… chaos… she'd make no attempt to… tain it… forgo sleep, as you do."

Not stable? Baki'd said I was unstable, and there was a _she_ in that damned frustrating jumble of words. If he was talking about me—talking about doing what I had the sneaking, furious suspicion he was talking about doing—I was going to break the damn door down and give him a hell-fueled piece of my mind.

Gaara's fury burst into life before mine could. "…_Paid. My. Dues,_" he snarled with all the force of a sandstorm whipping into being. From the sounds of it, that's what was happening. Glass shattered with the tinkling cry of a windchime and I smelled the acrid scent of spilt chemicals.

"Calm yourself… ra," Baki ordered coolly. "You'll simply… work… stabilize her."

Judging by the crashing, Gaara was sure as hell not a fan of this duty. Nervously, I moved off to the side, in case he stormed out the door.

A damn good idea. "_DON'T. TELL. ME. WHAT. TO. DO!_" he roared, every syllable clear as a bell thanks to his volume. The door slammed open, bent as a fork of lightning from the impact, and banged helplessly against its frame.

I moved to look through the warped hole just as Baki said, "You have become too accustomed to your war with Izari Sunako. I am your sensei, and you _always_ take orders from _me_."

I saw waves of gold spiraling throughout the room, Gaara at the eye of the storm. The top half of his garb hung loose at his waist, leaving his scrawny, sandy torso bare.

He knelt in the center of an inky, sprawling ring. I had a second to wonder why the hell bruises and old scars decorated his body like cracked ice when, to the best of my knowledge, he wore his damn sand armor day and night. Then Baki looked past the furious redhead—and since he was facing the door, his gaze caught mine like a steel trap. I gave him one good glare.

And then I ran.

-/-

I lived on the edge for a week, waiting for my death warrant to be bypassed and my execution to be carried out. Gaara acted like I hadn't witnessed him standing in as the center of a sandstorm. Terrified of bring his memory to the surface and setting him off like a damn firework, I made a damn serious effort to keep the swearing to a minimum.

Surprisingly, in turn, he made more requests than demands.

Not that a measly event like tying up a fellow shinobi, eavesdropping, and spying could solve all our problems. We still ordered each other around and I still swore up a storm at least once a day—just to prove he damn well couldn't 'stabilize' me—but the sand only rustled threateningly when I commanded and flinched when I spat out a word Gaara didn't like.

He seemed to be trying not to start arguments, which turned out to be as frustratingly boring as knitting appeared. And I never even saw Baki.

I started to relax, until the days ran together like melting wax into a month of monotony. Then I woke up one scorching desert morning with the idea from my dream already on my lips.

"Let's go shopping."

"_Why_," emphasized Gaara, "would _I _need to go… shopping."

"Because it's damn fun," I retorted. Flinch, regret. Regret? Hell no I didn't regret making him cringe. "And what else would the son of the frikkin' Kazekage do with all that money?"

"You seem to be mistaking me—"

"For a girl? For someone who gives a damn? Well, I've got news for you, Red. I don't have any girlfriends here to hang out with, so I'm _making_ you give a damn."

"—for someone," he muttered so quietly I almost didn't hear and certainly didn't listen, "who is in favor with his father."

"Unless you want to tell me where your sister is," I went on as if he hadn't spoken, "and I'll take her instead."

"She is at the Chūnin Exams in Konoha."

"Give me a break, it's been a month and a half. The Exams have _got_ to be over."

He paused, confusion twisting his thin mouth. "Baki said that—"

"D'you always believe everything Baki says?"

"…No."

"Jeez, then how do you make the distinction?"

"It does not matter where Temari and Kankuro are."

"It doesn't _matter?_ That's a hell of a way to treat your fa—"

I choked. Family. Oh hell hell hell my mother. Did it matter where she was? Because I sure as hell hadn't bothered to care in the past month and a half.

"Want to go find them?" I asked abruptly.

"No."

"Come on. You can take the chance to find out why Baki's lied to you this time."

"I said _no_."

"Fine," I muttered, now as determined as a politician to talk him into it. As if diplomacy was my forte. "Let's go shopping."

He twitched, sand dancing over the face of his gourd. Guess he didn't want another argument, though, because he didn't flat-out refuse.

"I have no access to my father's money."

"First order of business is to steal some then," I plotted without a moment's hesitation.

"Is that wise?"

"Hell no. But Baki doesn't pay me jack for this, so I guess we steal from him."

"Stop swearing."

"Sorry," slipped out before I could think, and I fought to cover it with a "Don't tell me what to do!"

It failed spectacularly, like Eiji's attempt to board down a slanted roof on a spare plan of wood with Raiyo behind her. I'd been at the bottom to catch the plank when they jumped and toss it forward for them to re-land on.

Eiji's idea. Also, disaster. Damn, I missed that girl, did I mention? I had to get Gaara to Konoha to "find his family" so I could visit mine.

Distracted, I refocused on Gaara, who was speechless as a stunned cow. We had a silent understanding where he pretended to stare each other down, even though his eyes were broken and he wouldn't have been able to find mine if I plucked them out and waved them in front of him.

Finally, he asked slowly, "How do we… begin?"

"That's the spirit!" I grinned, and then added, on inspiration, "I'm grinning. Just so you know."

-/-

"Where's Baki keep his money?"

"I do not know."

"Damn." Glance sideways, sigh. "Darn." All my meager plan crashed down like a sandcastle under the tides. Not that it was much of a plan. "This is stupid. Just go ask him for money." Twitch. "…Please."

"He will not like the idea."

"Tough. Just say… tell him it'll keep me stable." He flinched violently, sand twisting around the cork of his gourd.

"How—?"

"Oh, he didn't tell you I was there? Huh."

"You were… when?"

"Like a month ago. Whatever. I want to go shopping, damn it." I scowled at him and he scowled right back as if he could see me. "Or _something_ besides sit in this d—dumb house with a bunch of rooms I'm not allowed in and a bunch of people I hate. Damn, kid, don't you ever get bored? You're up twenty-four hours a day with nothing to do."

"…A little."

"A little? You have a little to do? Like what?"

"A little bored."

"Aha. So, shopping or Konoha."

"Baki will not allow either."

"To hell with Baki. Uh… Forget Baki. Or present him with both options. Say, 'We can go shopping or we can go to Konoha. Which do you prefer?'"

"I thought… you were planning to… steal."

"Well, yeah, we're d-d-dang good ninja, we should be able to do it, but don't you think Baki would figure out who did it? Like I'm not in enough d—thrice-cursed trouble?"

Unexpectedly, he flinched, and I sighed loudly. "What? I didn't swear once in that whole two sentences!"

"No… cursed."

"You don't like cursed either? You are da—dashed hard to please, you know that? Can't you just tell me what the problem is?"

He hovered in silence, then mumbled, "I do not want to go to Konoha."

"Why the he—ck not? You've been there once before."

"Twice."

"Twice? Oh no. I would have remembered if you showed up. I _looked_ for you, damn it, and for way too damn long, too. Or did you go before you turned five?"

"When I was… twelve."

"Liar," I spat automatically, face twisting with the pain of the ever-waiting. "You didn't come until I was fifteen and too damn old to care."

With that barrage of cuss words, I should have vanished underneath a haze of sand and blood, but Gaara just turned away. "Do not presume to know everything… about me." He started to walk, movements halting with but falling. He paused again, let his bandaged eyes face me, an old habit from when he could see the person he talked at.

"I do not want to go to Konoha." Pause. "And I have nothing to shop for."

"If you have nothing to shop for, you have nothing to live for," I announced, an old adage from Eiji, but he had turned a corner—without even running into it—and left me in his dust.

For a moment, I stood stunned as a tree hit by lightning. Then I nearly danced with glee, because he'd left me without a guard.

-/-

He wanted to forget the mission, wanted to forget the plan, wanted to forget the refusal that had sent Baki into a towering rage. He had never understood the plot, never wanted to, never cared, until the wooden gates of Konoha had stared him down and sent defiance shooting through his veins. Wooden gates and a word never even spoken. _Konoha_.

_"Obviously, it has been a long time, Gaara, since we have allowed the success of our mission to depend on you." Baki's tone overflowed with derision. "You speculate as to why?"_

_"No." His voice was low, hissing, furious. "I don't."_

She didn't know what she owed him, and the injustice throbbed through his shoulder in time with the pulse of his bruise as he collided with a door someone had carelessly left open. Injustice. His whole life beat with its rhythm. He was only trying to beat back. Each death was repayment for each bruise, each cut, each scar the sand should never have let him feel.

Each moment spent under Baki's experiment-driven knife was a step toward making sure _she_ paid in full. _Liar,_ she called him, and he roiled with rage he could hardly keep beneath the surface because she didn't dare to _know_.

He'd seen Konoha twice, but only once from the inside.

And he only held the fury in control because the demon didn't back it. Because the demon thrilled to have a fresh host, a mind not frayed and torn by fifteen years in its service.


	18. Because You Said So

**A/N: **Urgh, sorry! First 2/3 were easy, and then it was a long, slow funeral march to the end of the chapter. Yikes. ;; Hope you enjoy it! Don't know when the next one will be. D:

P.S. Be honest now. I really want Sunako to be a balanced character. Is she? How can I improve her?

P.P.S. Many thanks to The Prophet HaDag, who caught the 100th review! w00t!

-/-

I barreled off in the other direction as if the gates of Hell were opening in my wake, circled around, and skidded to a halt in front of the grey door, feeling smug at my ability to locate it. No way in hell was I losing that place again.

I nearly shoved right in, but I took a minute to consider. The door had not been replaced, merely beaten back into a shape more or less resembling its previous state. A bulge about two fingers wide remained, looking as out of place as a wrinkle in freshly-made sheets.

What the hell kind of doors lived in a Kazekage's house and yet had no one to shell out the cash to replace them when they were brutally murdered by infuriating redheaded demons? Something was up with that, I decided, bending slightly to peer through the small gap. Empty as a coal cellar in summer, and no sounds issued forth. While I pondered, a lone gnat-couple of sand drifted around the metal and into the room.

My fingers followed, tugging impatiently, as I sent a few more soldier-grains in after to jimmy some locks. Only after I triumphantly stepped inside did I consider the damned inconvenient concept of alarms.

Nothing obvious shrilled to life, and damned if I was going to leave after I'd finally gotten here. I would just have to work fast.

I ripped open the first cabinet I came to, but it was just piled with an avalanche of cracked, blistered, and warped beakers oozing trails of ebony slime. Why the hell hadn't they just thrown them away? Not interested in examining that black ooze too closely, I left the door hanging and moved on.

One drawer in the corner held a green-edged scroll; I unfurled it with satisfaction, certain it would be an explanation for all this, but the damn thing was written in some blocky, unidentified language that I sure as hell couldn't read. It smelled faintly of blood, too, though the symbols were as blue as Suna's sky. I shoved it in my kunai holster. I'd always been damn good at codebreaking, when I had the opportunity. Then again, maybe Aruno-sensei's scrawling gibberish didn't count as code.

Scooting over to another speckled grey cabinet, I discovered a teakettle coated with rust spattered across it like bloodstains. Or maybe the flaking red-brown substance _was_ partially blood; I really had no idea. I had even less idea why the hell Baki kept a rusty/bloody teakettle in his lab. Maybe in case Gaara got thirsty while he was experimented on. Sourly, I slammed the cabinet closed, only realizing how loud it would be half a second too late.

But still no one showed up to drag me out. No alarms, then? Or was I overestimating their response time? What the hell was going on with this damn room?

I grew not only increasingly frustrated, but increasingly _bored_. An scroll, a teakettle, and beakers. Another cabinet held more beakers, these whole. A yanking open of another drawer revealed it to be entirely filled with sand. Confusing, curious things that just made me damn mad because I couldn't figure them out.

I stalked over to the row of test tubes on one of the many counters and inhaled, probably not too damn wisely. Ink, blood, sand, and something the azure-blue of liquid lapis lazuli that I couldn't even begin to guess at. One cupped a selection of striated furs, though I couldn't have told you what from. One looked to hold a snowfall of tiny, glittering diamonds. I thought about palming a few but figured they'd probably be missed.

A Petri dish at the end of the row acted as a stage for a handful of short, crimson hairs—all split ends, didn't that boy ever cut his hair?—and a twist of pale strands the color of sand on a beach. No doubt whose those were: mine.

"What the hell!" I said loudly. Had that damn Gaara been taking them as I slept? No—incompetent as I occasionally was, I was still a damn ninja and I would notice if someone were plucking hairs out of my head while I was asleep. They probably came innocently off my pillow. Innocently.

I strode back to the drawer full of sand and jerked it open, glaring at the molehills of desert gold. A few buried grains feebly struggled out from their burial dirt, while the rest of the stuff just quivered threateningly. The grains that came free were unmistakably mine. Reaching over, I grabbed the test tube of blood and dumped it into the drawer. My sand danced into the air like spastic fruit flies; the remainder buzzed as if ready for take off. Some of that blood was mine, too—and what. The. Hell. Were they doing with my blood? I _know_ I would have noticed _that_ being taken, so where and when the hell had they gotten it?

Slamming the now-empty test tube back down in its rack, I began wrenching drawers open again. Beneath the row of test tubes I found a collection of photographs, all of me and Gaara, and all bordering on damn stalkerish: me walking and talking while he followed, bandaged face trained on the back of my head; us in one of our "glaring" matches; him sitting in my doorway as I slept. Each one had a burn mark in it, the smoky edges of which reached out to brush at our contours in the pictures.

Disgusted and enraged, I threw them back into the drawer and stomped out of the laboratory before I broke something.

I nearly crashed right into Gaara, who stood just on the other side of the doorway, arms held stiffly at his sides. "What the hell do you want?" I said rudely.

"I said that you should not be in there."

"Yeah, and I said I wanted to go shopping, and where the hell did that get me?" I was probably trying to get a rise out of him at that point, but he further infuriated me by hardly twitching at my words. Instead, he raised one tightly-clenched fist and uncurled it, revealing an assortment of money.

"Baki agreed."

"How the hell did you make him do that?" I gaped at the cash, and my fingers tingled for new gloves, my toes for new shoes.

"Neither he nor I wish for Leaf. Konoha is not a good place to be."

Like hell. It was a _damn_ good place to be—not as good as Suna, sure, but at least I had friends in Konoha. I hardly considered Gaara a friend. Well, I'd get him there eventually, if that was how it had to be.

"Sure, whatever," I said blithely. "When can we go?"

-/-

Right a-damn-way, as it turns out, thank you very much. Happily, Gaara had a little more money than what was in his hand, too; I commandeered it. "Woah," I said as I counted it out. "This is a damn good shopping trip."

"Please stop."

"Yeah, sure," I said distractedly, before nearly dropping the cash in surprise. Please? Had he really just said please?

"Actually, no," I stumbled, forcing myself to remember what the bribe of shopping had chased from my mind. "I'm pretty damn mad right now and I have a right to be! Who took those photos?"

"…photos?"

"Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about, dammit! Why are they _in_ there?"

"I don't know."

"Like hell you don't," I muttered, but Gaara didn't seem the type to dance around the truth. If he said he didn't know, he probably didn't know, for whatever stupid reason.

"Fine, whatever," I said airily, determined not to lose my window of opportunity. I could pick this up later. "Let's go shopping."

-/-

In point of fact, I didn't know where the shops in Suna were, and Gaara in his state of blindness, not to mention his tendency to perpetual avoid the social/shopping scene of his hometown, was no help.

After skulking about like outsiders, I spotted a gaggle of giggling girls. Their _hitai-ate_ proclaimed them as ninja, but their clothing and manner proclaimed them as shoppers as loudly as if they were marching down the street yelling, "We are shopping!"

I resented them. A desire to sneak up behind them and hold kunai to their throats lapped at my skin like the tide, but I resisted. I damn well wasn't going to begrudge them their fun just because I couldn't have it anymore.

Like hell. I was going to begrudge them all I wanted. I just wasn't going to _do_ anything about it.

The heat of the day had passed, and the shops were opening their doors like dominoes falling sideways. I burst into the first clothing store I came to with a smile that would have sent Gaara running for the dunes if he had any sense—or eyes. Maybe I couldn't giggle like those genin, but I could damn well still have _fun_.

I tried on clothes for half an hour, modeling outfits for Gaara that he sure as hell couldn't give an opinion on. But he didn't look bored or irritated, just confused as a duck head-down in the mud.

"Don't worry, Red, this is perfectly normal," I said, examining a fraying hem on a top I had rather liked. "Look a little more fed up, though, wouldn't want anyone to think you're enjoying this."

Trouble came like an earthquake when I was ready to leave. I possessed a new outfit nearly the same as my old, but navy blue and in two pieces; elbow-length black gloves replaced the shoulder-to-wrist fishnet. And hell if I was going to carry it.

"Oi, it's traditional, Redhead." I folded my arms, bags sitting on the floor at my feet. "It won't even be a challenge for you, you've got all that handy sand to whisk it around for you."

"I am not your—" he began heatedly.

"—slave?" I retorted. "That's what every man says. Newsflash: Just because you say it don't make it true."

Sand, trickling from the gourd like a broken hourglass, rippled along the floor like bubbling lava. The cashiers nearest us began to look nervous.

"The fact that _you_ say it does not mean I have to listen," Gaara growled.

"Uh, miss—" tried the closest, bravest cashier, in her early twenties with hair like chocolate curls. "Maybe—"

"Aw, come on, would you ever let your husband get away with making _you_ carry your shopping bags?" I snapped, rolling my eyes. She looked like she swallowed an 'I don't have a husband' before fighting back.

"Miss, is he your husband?"

I snorted. "No."

"Do you plan on making him your husband?"

"Hell no! But he's still the male in this shopping situation, and the male carries the bags."

"Miss, if he destroys any property, I will have to ask you to pay for it."

Wouldn't that be a fine joke, if Baki had to pay for damage Gaara caused. That sounded like a damn good idea, once I considered. Except that if I pointed to a clearance rack and said, "Gaara, kill," he'd probably just aim for me. It's not like he could see my directions.

I scrunched up my face and directed my glare all around, from the unseeing redhead to the brave cashier to the other cashiers, cowering behind the counter. I leveled an extra look of disgust at a particular atrocious shelf of shoes for good measure.

Okay, fine, I wasn't going to get out of this quicksand by ordering everyone around. What was Gaara always going on about? Compromise. Damn compromise.

"Fine," I announced loudly, picking up the tiny embellished bag containing my new gloves. "We'll share. I'll take one, you can take the other." I kicked the paper-wrapped outfit toward him; tentatively, the sand curled toward it and slithered beneath. Not like he'd even know he had the bigger one. Damn, now that I thought about it, I could have told him I'd take two and he'd take two and I wouldn't have had to carry anything. Next time.

The employees all looked pleased as a porcupine in a thicket to see us off. One sunny blonde even worked up the courage to cheer, "Thank you for your business, have a nice day!" The brunette just looked relieved that we hadn't broken anything.

Next time.

-/-

I hardly _needed_ anything else, but I was seized by the overwhelming desire to spend Baki's money. I did have some drawers to fill, anyway, and damned if I was going to let the opportunity pass. We swept through the stores like a sandstorm; I didn't carry any bags besides my gloves. Gaara was apparently damned awful at telling when he was being lied to, which was certainly good for me; I was about as good a liar as a reflection.

We showed up back at the Kazekage's mansion, Gaara trailing an oozing plateau of sand like a wedding train, carting all my shopping bags—except one—on top of it. Stretching my arms casually over my head, small bag dangling like a quiet wind chime, I strolled in through the front door with smugness written all over my face as if I were a cat whose whiskers were dripping cream.

"That wasn't so bad, actually," I told Gaara haughtily. "We should do it again sometime."


	19. Influences

**A/N:** If you reviewed and I haven't replied, I'm not ignoring you, I'm just lazy/busy. I'll see what I can do about that. ;;

-/-

After I'd cheated Gaara into performing a little free manual labor for me, I felt a little more inclined toward the kid. Not friendly, that was for damn sure, but I made an effort. I tried to compromise. I tried substitutes for the cuss words he was so damn scared of. I tried to teach him childhood games like "pin the kunai on the camel" and "hide and go kill"—toned down for my safety, that one. I did my damn best to stay on his good side and get on Baki's.

It was all part of my plan.

Every once in a while, I let something slip. I mentioned the fires of autumn in Konoha trees. I realized I was being damn insensitive on that one, but I took a grim pleasure in it nonetheless. I slipped in a wistful description of the cool breeze that relieved the ubiquitous heat of the desert day when one was beneath the trees. I hated this breeze as I hated all formed of cold—I preferred to stay inside at night—but I made it sound like a good thing.

I attempted to avoid the complete obviousness of a storm in the dunes, but subtlety has never been my forte.

I never saw Baki. I never made it back to that laboratory room again, either; I had Gaara attached to me like a sands-damned _tail_. Sometimes he didn't notice when we wandered randomly by, but shinobi fierce as tigers always glared me down as if daring me to keep my thoughts to myself.

"I am really sands-trapped _bored_ of walking through this building over and over," I told Gaara while curled grumpily on a couch in front of a coffee table utterly and depressingly devoid of coffee. The kid perched next to me, giant sandy gourd preventing his total relaxation. That and the giant demon rammed down his throat. I still had his sash somewhere in my room—hah, room, closet more like—so he'd clearly found another one somewhere. It was ragged and grey, like a worn-out slug, and it looked increasingly ready to snap every half second. He refused to give into my efforts to convince him to just leave the damn thing off.

"I will ask him," said Gaara. I stopped and stared before narrowing my eyes suspiciously. "Ask who?" I demanded, realizing one startled moment later that Gaara never _asked_.

"Baki."

I snorted. "Ask him what?"

"To go to Konohagakure."

This robbed me of all possible snarky, irritable retorts. I blinked at him, and couldn't possibly restrain the subsequent smirk that unfurled like a Venus fly-trap blooming. I straightened out, crossed my legs, and tucked my hands behind my head.

"Sweet, Red," I said. "I'll be waiting for the good news."

He sat there for a moment, watching me like a cat sizes up a horse—a creature bigger and yet much dumber than it—as if he weren't even blind. Then I raised my eyebrows at him; as if on cue, he rose to his feet and shuffled out the door. I crossed my arms over my chest and grinned.

-/-

After two hours that dragged like wet sand, I got tired of waiting for Gaara to fumble his way around his house and left. I snuck by the lab again to see if I could get in, but the blank stretch of hallway past the door was about as conducive to sneaking as a brick road through a desert. A pair of guards glared me down and I redirected toward my closet 'room.' Gaara sure as hell _better_ be able to find me there, or else he was more of a moron than I gave him credit for.

Well, ten minutes staring at my closet wall was about as exciting as watching cactus grow, so I flung myself back out into the hall, determined to get back into that damn lab if it killed me. I nearly locked lips with Gaara as I skidded out the door and ran straight into him. Damn was that a scary thought. A scary, scary thought. I also hadn't realized I was the same height as that kid.

"Hey, you found me," I said, taking a casual step back. "What did he say?"

"No."

"Damn. Sorry," I said automatically, then noticed he hadn't even flinched. Huh. "I guess we need a new plan." I paused, and before I could suggest something as hilarious as karaoke, Gaara took over.

"We should go… anyway."

I thought I was going to choke on that karaoke, and then suddenly I was laughing like a crazy Konoha bird. "Seriously, Gaara? You want to head off to Konoha with a kunoichi you don't even like—who made you blind as hell, no less, or did you forget that?—with_out_ the blessing of your lord and master?" I didn't even bother to worry about the swearing. I was too busy trying to breathe around my slightly hysterical, completely disbelieving laughter. "Damn, kid, I have been a bad influence on _you_."

Nonetheless, he seemed entirely unphased, completely damn serious—though his sand twitched like a nervous wreck, maybe at my laughter, maybe at my swearing. I took that into consideration while deciding whether or not I wanted to spend around a week traveling with this insane redhead. Just how damn likely was it that he would kill me before we hit Konoha?

And was it the least bit likely that I could get _him_ killed and be released from my obligations?

"Do you really want to?"

He seemed to be pondering more whether he actually _wanted_ it rather than whether or not he planned to go. Damn dad probably never asked him what he wanted before. Nor Baki. I hadn't a clue about his siblings.

"Yes."

"Sweet. Let's get to work."

-/-

I was impatient as all hell, but I knew this was going to take some time. In fact, I had no damn idea how to start. Baki had to get used to us being going for long enough that by the time he realized we had disobeyed him, it was too late to get us back.

But the more I thought I about it, the more I just wanted to get the hell out from under Baki's thumb, and to hell with preparations. I didn't want to plan. I just wanted to run.

The one thing I had never done since coming back to Suna was look up the friends from when I was small. I couldn't even begin to believe that they'd remember me—hello, I'd been gone ten years, and five-year-old friendships rarely stick with you as long as a rainstorm in the desert—but the desire came over me like quicksand and I decided to go. Before Konoha. Who knew? Maybe one of them would have something to help.

I tried to explain to Gaara that he sure as hell couldn't come with me on this one. My old friends wouldn't even open the door for me. They'd probably just scream and lock every opening in their little stone houses. Hell, I would if I were on the other end.

He got it alright, but it pained him. He shivered and seemed to wilt, though he would never actually show it, being too proud and upright and cold. Irritatingly, I felt a touch of guilt for the kid—he'd had enough people reject him over the years, I didn't need to add to it. Except of course that I _did_ reject him, as completely as a fox mother rejects and elephant baby as not her own, so really, just telling him that my friends wouldn't accept him either wasn't doing that much to help. Or make it worse. Was it?

I abruptly stopped thinking about it. I merely told Gaara he would have to amuse himself for a day, don't run into too many walls, and this was all preparation for our trip. He watched me hop out a window and jump down to the dusty streets, not wanting to run into any of Baki's goons who would prevent me from leaving. Watching. He always seemed to be watching, even though the kid _couldn't see_. He stood at the window for a while after that, I'm pretty damn sure, though I ducked down an alley first chance I got, nervous as an ant under a sandal to have him staring blindly at me as I traveled.

As I headed through the streets, having a much better grasp on them that the first day I was back, I was hit with the realization like a rock that I had about as much idea of where these old friends lived as Suna's sky had clouds. Maybe I could find their old homes, but people moved around.

Well, most people. If I remembered correctly, Saru Nami's family was about as solid as their stone house, and they planned to live in the side of their cliff for the rest of forever.

And when I say the side of a cliff, I mean it.

I hiked to the edge of Suna, not taking the rooftops for concern that I would run into the crazy lady with the flowerpots and find more shards of pottery in my skin. Then I began circling around the building, searching the ragged sentinel stone walls for the nook I knew was around here _somewhere_.

I circled half the village before I finally spotted the divot, the tiny black windows staring down at me. Smiling in satisfaction, I began to climb.

And damn was it harder than I remembered.

My hands bled, despite the chakra sticking them to the stone like desperate red glue. My sandaled feet slipped despite the same, though the chakra wasn't mixed with blood. Dangling over the desert abyss like a wind chime, I thought too many damn times that I was going to die. Muttering darkly, I demanded that the stone tell me why in the hell the Saru family lived up in the side of a cliff. It silently refused to answer, and I kicked it, flailing like a feather in a breeze as the motion nearly dropped me again.

Slippery red palms skidded off stone and I pinwheeled, feet firmly attached but swinging downward in a terrifying spiral. Should have brought Gaara after all, he could do his damn teleport thing and get us to the top with his sand. Damn redheaded demon kid, never around when I needed him.

With a deep, panicked breath, I released the chakra in my feet and kicked off lightly, pressing myself far enough away from the stone that I could flip, catch a jagged outcropping, and hang in terror for a few more trembling seconds, chakra pulsing through my extremities like the heartbeat of a frightened rabbit.

When I could breathe again, I scurried up the rest of the wall, not bothering to be slow for fear of losing my grip again and plummeting. Damn Saru probably never got any visitors, and serve them right.

I collapsed onto a ledge and hyperventilated for a short ten minutes, then finally hauled myself up like a horse with three broken legs trying to struggle on and staggered to the door.

Instead of knocking, I flopped against it like a limp fish, leaving bloody handprints on the wood. Grumbling, I sort of pattered at the door irritably, rather than knocking, and had just returned to a more upright position when it opened.

I stared blankly for a moment like a confused raccoon at the girl who'd answered the door. Damn had that girl grown up, from the scraggly green-haired child to a girl with straight aqua hair and stunning emerald eyes. "Uh, Nami?" I said. "Hell, never would have expected you to look like _that_. How many boyfriends do _you_ have?"

"None," she said. "Nobody wants to climb up here to visit me. Who the hell are you?"

"Izari Sunako," I introduced hoarsely, wiping my hands on my clothes and being quite pleased with myself for wearing the red outfit today. Nami glanced at the blood in surprise, but she was a bit more interested in me.

"Little blonde girl, left, what, ten years ago? What are you doing back here?"

I fumed slightly under my breath, then finally settled on, "Working."

She surveyed my forehead, where I proudly sported my Sunagakure _hitai-ate_. "You're a Suna-nin."

"Yes," I said defensively. "Did you expect something else?"

"They don't usually give _hitai-ate_ to shinobi who've been gone ten years."

"Yeah, well, I'm a special case," I muttered.

"Well, come in here and get some bandages on those hands before you bleed to death, and then tell me what you're doing on my doorstep, because who the hell climbs a cliff to visit someone she hasn't seen in a decade?" She stepped back, eyeing me like I was a puzzle she needed to solve—and if I remembered rightly, that girl had always been good at puzzles, figuring out all the puzzle-traps at the Academy despite being four. I strode after her, blinking at the darkness of the foyer.

"Damn, Nami, are the lot of you nocturnal?"

"Mother's sleeping," she said, throwing a look at me.

"What about the rest of you?"

She shrugged, and it was plain easy to see she was purposefully not looking at me. "Not here."

"Right. Well, I can't see in the dark, so if you have—"

"Keep your voice down, Sunako, or I'm throwing you back out that door and over the cliff," she said quietly, and I stopped talking. She was damn intimidating. So did they throw her out in the field with the puzzle traps, or into the meeting room with the verbal ones?

"Sure thing," I muttered, trying to make out some sort of hint in the darkness. A hallway, a door, a window, a lamp... nope, couldn't make anything out. No wait, there was a door—a door—a door—they were all closed. It seemed to me about time the Saru family left the cliff. They were going mad as cats who saw in the dark and closed all the doors just to demand they be opened.

Nami leaned on one of the doors, shoving it open, and I was relieved to see a light soft as a candle on the other side. She motioned me throw quickly, flapping her hands like a mother duck, and hurriedly shut the door, though not before I heard a quiet, unhappy groan from somewhere down the hall.

Turns out it _was_ candle light. And just the one.

It looked to be Nami's room, patterned like the sea—Nami had never been a fan of the sandy sea, preferring to dream of the distant ocean. Seawead twisted over the stone walls, flickering in the dancing candle light as if moving in the ocean currents. Aqua and cerulean sheets twisted over a narrow bed, as if they hadn't been straightened out in weeks. Then again, shinobi had better things to do than make their beds—but I'd always remembered Nami as being almost compulsively neat. It seemed to help her concentrate. Maybe she didn't concentrate anymore. Or maybe she just didn't need help.

She rifled through a drawer filled with a jumble of what appeared to be stars and leaves and things off the ground. Candle stubs mixed in with used matches. From the back, she pulled out a rather grimy set of bandages, which I eyed suspiciously, inferring that all those would do was give me an infection. But as I watched, her hands shook; chakra shuddered through her fingers, suffusing the bandages and wiping all trace of dirt and soot from the ivory fabric.

I blinked, shocked as a cat doused in water. Nami's brother Kanri had been the healer in the family; Nami and her puzzles and her traps would never be able to sterilize a bandage.

Damn, it had been ten years, as Nami kept pointing out—who was to say I wasn't just remembering wrong? And in the long and short of things, people changed. People always changed.

-/-

He did not believe in subtlety. Nor did the impatient demon twisting in his heart. And so he thirsted for his revenge, consumed with his desire to throw the Shukaku out, and yet he could not pretend that the fury was not settling.

Without her help, Gaara could walk through the halls of this mansion and only hit one corner out of seven, instead of them all. He was remembering his way home. He didn't need her anymore. He had never needed her.

And yet, he found himself infinitely curious at her words. Where was his... family? His father sat in his throne and ruled over the desert, or thought he did, but no word of Temari and Kankuro filtered back from Konoha. Baki certainly knew where they were, that man with one hidden eye and many hidden secrets. Baki refused to tell, although Gaara was the key to his long-worked plan. He should bow down to Gaara and the Shukaku that writhed inside, but he still lorded over the boy as if he were a redheaded broken doll that couldn't walk on its own.

He could. And he would take the corners as they came.


	20. Over the Edge

**A/N: **Hey, guys! I've had twenty minutes left on this chapter for four days, but I could never find those twenty minutes. XD Luckily I finally did, and here it is, only slightly more than a month since the last one? ;;

ALSO. Chapter 20, everybody! :D

-/-

"So where are your brothers?" I asked as Nami began wrapping my fingers. After all those times coiling bandages over Gaara's eyes, it was damn nice to have someone else do it for a change.

"Uh uh," said Nami without looking up. "You first. I'm not telling you anything until you explain what you're doing at the top of this cliff, bleeding all over my bedroom floor."

"Hey, you could have picked a different floor for me to bleed on." I shrugged, watching blood bloom on the cloth like tiny apricot blossoms. "Just wanted to check on my old school friends, and you're the only one I could guarantee still lived in the same damn place."

"You sound like a retired shinobi trying to find her old buddies that survived the war, Sunako. We were five, and it's not like we were soul mates."

"Yeah, well, I was bored, okay?" I said irritably. "And I'm probably looking for a way to get to damn Konoha."

"Ah, and now we get to the heart of the matter," she said mildly, sealing the last bandage with a dab of chakra and dropping my hand to rifle through a drawer.

"I didn't come here to ask for help," I snapped, folding my arms.

"Hey, no worries, Izari. Who would climb up here unless they wanted something? I got it. I'm used to it. You need to get out of Suna, hmm? Didn't you just get here?"

"It's just for one short trip," I muttered. "For my… job."

She eyed me, about as believing as a twelve-year-old at the name Santa Claus. I rolled my eyes and glared. "I want help, but I sure as hell don't need it. That's not why I'm here. If you're not interested in visiting, maybe you can tell me where the hell anyone else lives nowadays."

Name slammed the drawer shut without taking anything out, though she stopped the motion before it hit the dresser and slid it silently closed. The contents skidded loosely around as she turned to look at me.

"Let's go outside before we go blind."

She stalked over to a door tucked into the corner of her room like a recalcitrant child and opened it onto a steep stone staircase that jagged up into the grey light of the cliff-shadowed sun. We emerged onto a roughly-formed roof under the divot of the cliff. Nami faced the distant village, buildings scattered like obstacles in a maze, and clutched her arms against her chest as if she wanted to fidget but wouldn't let herself.

"My brothers are dead," she said finally, voice carefully controlled. "So is my father. What exactly is your problem?"

I leaned against the rock, feeling it dig into my shoulder blades like emerging wings, and tried to decide what the hell she wanted me to say. Guess she figured out my dilemma, because she said stiffly, "I told you because you asked, not because I wanted you to talk about it. Now what the hell are you trying to do?"

"Uh… I need to get myself and one other out of Suna and to Konoha before anyone notices we've vanished like chickens to the fox's den and sends someone after us."

"Fine." Nami slid a crumpled piece of paper and a pencil from her sleeve and scribbled on it—even as a five-year-old, she'd had handwriting neat as little soldiers; what the hell had happened to that?—using her other hand for support. "Remember Soriko?"

"Who the hell could forget Soriko?"

Nami snorted. "Right. Here's her address. She's damn good at clones and transformation jutsu, so she maybe can help you." She tucked the pencil back into her sleeve and held out the paper. "Who's your part two, Izari?"

I hesitated, the rabbit on the verge of bolting, then said, "Gaara."

Her hand shook violently, letting the address slip and toss over the edge of the roof, scuttling down the cliff-face like a spidery scrap of snow. "Leave," she said, her voice suddenly cold, her hands quaking as she curled them into fists at her side.

"Eh? The hell—?"

"Get down before I throw you down, Izari Sunako."

"Nami, the kid's a moron, I don't want anything to do with him, but—"

"Get _out_."

As clueless as a leaf in a storm that has suddenly changed directions, I edged around her, one eye on the girl turned suddenly _crazy_ as a bat in the daylight and the other on the stairway back down into her ocean of a bedroom. She took one dangerous step toward me and I stopped, hands in the air, palms out.

"What, I can't even leave from the house?"

"No."

Muttering darkly, I skirted around Nami, feet a hairsbreadth from going off te edge. I gave her a glare that would have ripped her heart out had it been an actual weapon, then slid over the edge.

Slippery bandages snagged on the coarse stone of her Cliffside house. I cursed like a bandit and kicked chakra into the soles of my sandals as I furiously contemplated the long, long climb—or the damn short fall—below me.

Nami appeared at the brink, looming over me like a dying angel. "Nothing against you, Izari," she said hollowly, "but no taint of Sabaku no Gaara will touch my house." Her hands clenched convulsively.

"What the hell?" I gasped. "I mean, nobody _likes_ the damn redhead, but did he kill your brothers or something?"

She looked about damn ready to trample my fingers and send me plummeting. "Have a safe trip," Nami said flatly, and disappeared from view.

-/-

The descent was made even more difficult by fingers clad in silky bandages, but Nami had done her job properly and none of the cloth wraps unsealed. Nonetheless, I sure as hell wasn't having the time of my life. No wonder Nami's potential boys didn't want to go visit her. What a damn lonely life it must be to live in the side of a cliff with no easy manner of ascent, but the Saru family had always taken their sentinel roles so damn seriously. They'd lived there for generations, but from my elaborate impressions of Nami's house, they weren't doing their jobs so well just now.

As I climbed, I did my very best not to look down, because I didn't like the image of tiny insect me plunging to a gory death in the sands below. I tell you, I did a damn bad job of keeping my eyes on the cliff, but it turned out to be a damn good thing I looked.

Fluttering against the rock, lodged in a jagged crack and desperately flapping for freedom like a dying bird, was the scrap of address Nami had written down for me before her crazy time.

I eyed it with a sort of latent fury, half convinced I could psychically float it toward me without having to detour in my mind-cripplingly terrifying descent. The trouble came in the fact that it was on the other damn side of an outcropping of cliff particularly exposed to wind and sand, which had left the thing smooth as a porcelain teacup and with fewer handholds. I had to get it, though. I knew it would take me way too damn long to find Soriko's address again on my own without alerting the suspicion of Baki and his minions.

I also knew I had to clean up my language before I got back to the Kazekage's mansion. Every other thought was a cuss, because Nami hadn't been afraid of them and then she had made me mad as a dehydrated lizard. Gaara wasn't going to tolerate it.

Damn how I had fallen if I now determined my thoughts by what Gaara tolerated. _Damn_. There just wasn't any other thing to say about that.

I scooted closer to the eroded promontory like a distressed inchworm, flooding my palms with chakra. Perhaps it was a waste, but I'd sure as hell rather be tired when I stepped on the ground than dead when I landed on it. The fabric over my hands became so sticky I could hardly pull my fingers away from the cliff face, but while I was impatient as hell, I thought the extra effort was probably worth it.

At last, with a final cringe, I suckered myself to the satiny smooth surface of the cliff. Then I hung there like a distraught flag and stared determinedly at the rock while nearly biting through my lip. My hands clung to nothing; I merely adhered to the stone, and if my chakra supply faltered, there was nothing to grab on the way down.

Oh kami of the sands. The things I did for this damned redhead. Nevermind that I was the one who wanted to go to Konoha, he had damn well better appreciate what I was going through to get us out of Suna.

With an effort, I tore my left hand off the cliff and stretched, sliding extremity by extremity around the silky outcropping, eyes trained on the flapping paper as if I were holding it in place. It settled as the slight breeze died, and flopped wearily against the rock. I wished to hell I could do the same.

About a meter from armsreach, I could feel my chakra start to run out, and that's when I knew I was in trouble. I still had half the damn cliff before I hit—literally—the ground.

I started to pick up the pace, over-chakra'd hands squelching like pulling free of quicksand. I snarled quietly to myself and decreased the flow of chakra to my palms, hissing as my death grip on the side of the cliff weakened. As a safety measure, I let the inordinate amounts of chakra linger in my sandaled feet, but I knew I would have to drop some of that off, too, if I wanted to have enough left to hit the ground. Ninja could jump far, but sure as hell not that far.

Continuing to edge toward the address, I stretched out my hand, now attached to the cliff with only three fourths of the available limbs. I did not like the feeling one damn bit. I was one extremity away from being only half safe, and that was half of me away from dying a bloody death. In panic, a wave of chakra surged back into my palm, dragging itself from my feet, then pulsating back as I forced my concentration to return it to where I wanted it to go. I wavered, shivered as my chakra refused to listen; grains of sand hovered around my head like a halo, proclaiming my certain death as I slipped from the cliff face.

Then I was no longer attached by any limbs at all.

I lunged, snatching at the paper, then let out a distressed half curse, half scream as I skidded down the rock, scraping skin from knees and elbows. I hit a jutting piece of rock, which knocked me off course like a boat hitting a stone and sent me tumbling away from the wall. My vision danced and spun like a wild party; blood streaked along the rock in a sickening trail. I scrabbled at the stone with one hand, desperately shoving chakra into bleeding fingers in an attempt to catch myself. The other hand clutched desperately at the hard-earned piece of paper bearing an address that would, one way or the other, get me killed.

I sure as hell didn't want to alert the whole of Sunagakure that I was a damned fool idiot climbing down their cliff, but I was about to scream in the hopes that it would save me. That was when chakra-bubbling hand caught on a jag and stuck like a fly in honey.

For a moment, I hung there, crying, to my immense disgust. But hell. Ow. Ow. Damn it,_ OW._ And... scary.

Then, feeling my chakra sputtering again, I steeled myself against the utter terror that was pulsing through my veins like a drug and stuffed the address in the nearest holster, then hurriedly began descending the remaining meters of the cliff.

When my feet finally touched ground, leaving me alive and not squashed flat as a sleeping cat, I collapsed to a crooked sitting position and tried to breathe. It was harder than pulling a horned toad through a needle. Not that I'd tried that, but my brain was completely fuzzy, still twisting with panic, adrenaline, pain, and the utter relief to be in the sand, bleeding but alive. Alive.

Alive.

It was damn unlikely that I was going to remain alive if I went to Konoha with Gaara. Maybe I should rethink this plan. Maybe I should sneak from Suna without him, leaving transformed Soriko in my place and the real Gaara to not know the difference.

But when he did find out, that would nigh on for certain get Soriko deader than a grain of sand. Maybe I should just stay here.

That seemed too much like giving up, damn it.

I raised my arm to examine my elbow carefully, wincing as it moved. Blood curled over my skin, trails tickling like cat whiskers; the skin was shredded as if that same cat had taken its claws to me. I wasn't going to walk all the way to Soriko's like this, and if I did, I highly doubted she would let me in the door looking like a serial killer had come after me. She didn't know me. Well, actually, it was entirely possible Soriko _did_ remember me—she'd had a head for recalling only the most insignificant details and nothing else—but people changed in ten years, as I kept being reminded. She could remember me and still throw me out the door because I was bleeding to death on her threshold.

I could return to Gaara's house, but nothing about that prospect was at all appealing. Baki would want to know what the hell had happened to me—hell, Gaara would, too, he could probably smell the blood—and I would have to—

Well, actually, there was a thought that popped up like a clever little fox. I didn't even have to lie about it. I could say I was visiting Saru Nami, an old school friend, and even though I was damn bad at lying, nobody would care.

Nonetheless, the plan jabbed at my brain like a needle—although that was probably the multiple head bashings I had received on the way down. I sure as hell didn't actually want to go back there yet. Explaining myself just seemed like too damn much work when I was tired and sore and dizzy. I'd probably let something slip that I would never get back.

Okay, okay. Fine. Plan B.

My brain was having a damn hard time coming up with a plan B. In fact, it was having a damn hard time doing anything but swear and shout violently at me for being a complete moron and abusing it so handily. Damn. Damn damn damn it!

Healers. Did I know any healers? Yes I did. I knew Saru Kanri, who was apparently dead, and I knew Saru Nami, who had just thrown me off a cliff. And Haruno Sakura, who was in damn Konoha, where I couldn't go until I talked to Soriko, which I couldn't do until I _stopped bleeding all the hell over._

With a deep, shaking breath, I prodded my brain forcefully and demanded that it calm down. First, to stop the bleeding.

Then I could see about getting the hell out of town.


	21. Accidental Apparitions

**A/N: **An extra long chapter, because I thought a chapter for Gaara's birthday should actually have a little Gaara in it. XD Happy Gaara's birthday!

-/-

I really didn't want to go ripping pieces of my clothing just to stop bleeding all the hell over, but luckily for my stylish red outfit, I remembered that I still carried fistfuls of bandages for changing Gaara's blindfolds. His eyes didn't bleed too frequently anymore, but sometimes red blots like eyespots on a moth flowered across the fabric. It seemed like the demon inside him was fighting for its vision, forcing its eyes into his in futile attempts to see. I usually wanted to give that demon a good stabbing, both because I then had to touch the damn kid's face while I rewrapped the bandages and because I imagined that had to hurt like hell.

Grabbing a pile of cloth from its satchel, I dropped it on the sand in front of me, already spotted with blood. It was tangled together like white worms because I hadn't bothered to fold it, and I had no ounce of Nami's medical jutsu to sterilize it. Not to mention I had just guaranteed they were covered in sand. Oh, what the hell, I just had to stop bleeding all over the place, somebody else could clean it up later. Maybe I would get to go back and visit that nice brunette in the hospital.

I began coiling cloth clumsily, fingers trailing loose bandages and slipping as if coated in ice. At last I looked half mummy and half shinobi, and hell, half failed amputee. Something told me that was too damn many halves, but I concentrated on wobbling around on legs that squeaked with agony every time I moved them. The bandages caught the blood, but they also rubbed uncomfortably against the wounds with the slightest movement.

Eyeing the few spare lengths of bandage, I wound them one more time over the bloody swaths. Faint pink splotches still stood out against the white, but enough shinobi these days wore bandages as a fashion statement that I could probably get away with it. Maybe they were hoping to get hurt, or maybe they were just being prepared, but I called it a decent camouflage at this point. It didn't quite match my shredded fishnet, but I sure as hell hoped nobody would be noticing that.

It was vaguely possible that Soriko might, but that point I would be in the door, so that all worked out in my scheme of things.

Thoroughly mummified, I scooped up the battered piece of paper bearing a half-faded address, the graphite smeared by the fact that I had clutched it in a death grip all the way down the damn cliff. Not to mention the scrawl of a handwriting, though I certainly remembered precocious Saru Nami as having neat handwriting even at age five. I remembered because all the teachers had told us our handwriting should look like that, and mine sure as hell never would. The address, however, was still mostly readable, and miracle of the kami, I actually knew where the hell Soriko's street was. Not too far away, either, and wasn't that damn nice. I didn't think I could walk halfway across the village on shredded legs.

-/-

I showed up at house 398 and wasn't sure exactly how the hell to knock, since every centimeter of skin was razored and agonizing, and consequently covered in blood bandages. I glared threateningly at the solid wooden door for several intense moments, as if that would force it open; when it didn't, I settled for tapping the door with my knuckles, tentative as a butterfly, and hoping someone would hear.

Reasonably, no one did, since only bats had hearing that superb, of course. I could have burnt down the door if I had fire in my eyes, but I didn't. A mental note told me to work out how the hell to get such a thing, then I scraped together a reluctant bundle of sand—there was plenty of blood to go around—and threw it at the door like a fist. It thumped rather despondently and then disintegrated in a shower of golden dust.

I waited. I was on the verge of kicking down the damn thing, bandages or not, when the door opened. A tall, vaguely familiar boy waited on the other side, with flipped-out hair the color of a clear desert sky and poisonously green eyes. "Yes?" he asked, clearly clueless as a cucumber as to my identity. Maybe I didn't know him. That 'vaguely familiar' thing happened a lot after a ten year hiatus; I kept wanting to see people I knew.

I squinted at him and said, "Soriko?"

He eyed me strangely, and I added with a cough, still trying to work out his face, "Is she here?"

"Nope," he said. "You want across the street and three doors down. She's in 395."

I squinted at the address clenched in my fist. "No damn way is that a five," I muttered, looking back up at him. "I appreciate it. Hey—" And it came to me uncertainly, a millipede crawling over my thoughts. Ugh, what a chilling image.

"Wait, you're Kanri, aren't you? How the hell's that work out?"

I thought I detected the hint of a twitch or the widening of those bright green eyes, but I couldn't be sure. "No," he said calmly. "I'm Sorani."

I snorted, which was almost a laugh, and said, "Right. How come Nami thinks you're dead?"

He slammed the door in my face.

"Well, that was rude as a dry oasis," I muttered, but my curiosity was about to get me in way damn far over my head. With a grumbling, shaky effort, I gathered the sandy fist back up and flicked it at the door again.

To my vehement surprise, it actually opened, and damn quickly. Unfortunately, what waited on the other side was a kunai sharp as a star hovering perilously close to my eye.

"Are you lost?" Kanri asked dangerously.

I probably—no, not probably, sure as _hell_—should have said, "Yes, I'm looking for Meikin Soriko, would you remind me of her house number please?" As you might have guessed, I didn't. Instead, I demanded, "Did you know you're sister thinks you're dead?"

I experienced an injection of pure terror, not unlike the one I'd had while tumbling down a cliff though without the rushing wind, as the kunai darted toward my face. It merely skimmed along my face, however—great, more bandages needed—and his fist closed over the shoulder of my knee-length vest. The handle of the kunai dug into my collarbone as Kanri dragged me inside and slammed the door once again.

Something told me I wasn't going to be getting to Soriko's house any time soon. Damn.

"Who in the name of the Kazekage are _you_?" the older, supposedly-dead boy demanded furiously, kunai returned to a very threatening position. I did not like it at all.

"Don't speak to me about the Kazekage," I muttered. "It's his fault I'm here. If not for him I would be back in Konoha dreaming I was here."

Kanri gave me that look again like he had no idea what the hell I was talking about. "Name."

"Izari Sunako, like that means anything to you," I snapped. "Tell me what the hell is going on."

"No. Izari. Izari Koten died in a sandstorm. Uncle? Father?"

"Father," I said under my breath, with a sharp pang of pain.

"I'm sorry," said Kanri, brusquely, his eyes sliding off to the side as if he didn't want to appear completely heartless but couldn't muster up the strength to meet my gaze. "But you being Izari Koten's daughter still does not explain what exactly you are _doing in my house._"

"Well," I said irritably. "I was going to see Soriko when you dragged me into it."

"It was an accident?"

"Yes!" I emphasized, brows drawn down in aggravation as I waved around the address Nami had written. "Your beloved sister's penmanship has taken a serious turn for the worse since I've been gone, and I just misread it. Now what the hell is going on?"

"How did you recognize me?" Kanri demanded, eyes following the movement of the paper.

"I just spent a good deal of time getting thrown off a cliff by Nami," I growled, "and the Saru family was on the brain. If you had just told me to shove it because your name was _Sorani_, I probably would have left the hell off and gone to see Soriko. How come no one _else_ has recognized you? _I_ haven't seen you in ten damn years!" Just like everyone else around here. Damn, how things changed.

"Tei and Kobin are dead," said Kanri flatly, "and Nami never comes down. Neither does Mother, if she's still alive."

"She is," I muttered. "Living like a blind worm in a cave, but alive." I took a surreptitious glance around, perusing escape options, and that's when I noticed the labyrinth painted on the floor. It twisted outward like a snake, drawing my gaze to half-finished puzzles and brainteasers stacked neatly against the walls.

"What the hell," slipped out of my mouth before I could even try to stop it.

I hesitated a moment, then shook my head. "I must have mixed you guys up. Thought she was the neat, puzzle-y one. Don't remember as much of my Sunagakure life as I thought I did, but hell, I spent twice as much time in Konoha. It's understandable. Can I get the hell out of here now?"

"I need you to stick around," Kanri said casually. "I may not have expected this, but I of course planned for it."

"What does that mean?" I asked warily.

"That you're not the first one, Izari. My family doesn't come down, but you can plainly see that I am not invisible."

That sounded damn scary. That sounded like I was going to disappear. I'd been disappeared like I'd been ravaged by a dog—not at all subtle, but quick and brutal—and I sure as hell wasn't going to let it happen again. Instead of the following the conspiracy line of thought, I was going to get out of here and connect dead brothers to grey laboratories some other time. Maybe on the way to Konoha when I had nothing to worry about except a murderous redhead and the lies I would be leaving in my place.

"What are you doing?" Kanri asked cagily.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, disarmed. I glanced sideways, following his expression, and found sand hovering around my shoulders. At my look, it dropped like a recalcitrant child. I huffed in frustration and used the movement of turning my gaze back to Kanri for appraising the window.

Carefully, I folded my hands together and picked at the bandages over my fingers. "That just happens," I said, rubbing at partially-scabbed wounds and trying not to wince as they began to bleed again with sharp agonizing stabs. Chewing my lip distractedly, I brushed my fingers over the particles of sand on my clothing as if wiping them off. My hands dropped back to my sides, tossing a few bloodstained grains behind me. Kanri was talking, but I was concentrating too damn hard on making the sand listen to have any clue what the words were.

My fingers flickered, and then I made a sudden movement toward the window. Kanri's kunai followed me, lunging to block my path. I swept out a kunai of my own and flung it into the glass, which shattered like a dream catcher web. Kanri grabbed for my outstretched wrist; I jerked it out of the way and used the momentum to spin into a back kick that took him in the chest. He stumbled back a few steps and I finished the spin with a back fist to his head. He recovered quickly, but my reluctant sand had already fumbled the door unlocked. I yanked it open as Kanri's kunai sliced through a twist of bandages and the shoulder of my vest.

I swore darkly and fell out the door, pulling it shut after me. Kanri thudded against the other side, scrabbling at the handle as I darted down the street like a lizard from the talons of a hawk.

I noted Soriko's house as I ran past it, but Kanri knew where I planned to go, so I sure as hell couldn't fall into that trap. I had no such thing resembling a plan, of course, except maybe keep running until I hit the Kazekage's mansion, where Baki's big, burly minions would keep Kanri away from me and possibly control his _craziness._

…Baki's big, burly minions who were storming down that street like an avenging army. I recognized them from my forays past that damn lab. So did I still want to hide behind them if they were charging toward me?

Damn it, I wouldn't bet on them receiving me with hugs and puppies. Whether this had to do with Kanri's damn mysterious conspiracy or merely the fact that I had skipped out on my job—never _mind_ that I was doing this _for_ that damn redhead, so really, I was damn on target—they were bound to be as unhappy with me as owls were with the sun.

I swung down the alley between two houses, scrambled up the wall, slunk over the roof—with a wary eye out for the woman with flower pots, in case she was traveling—and dropped down into the next between space. I huffed irritably, darted to the left, and thumped against Soriko's back door.

"Worst plan ever," I muttered, pounding the flat of my hand against the wood. Scraped up skin flaked off again, leaving splinters of blood on the surface. I didn't have to wait very long, thank the kami, before the door opened on a bewildered little girl.

People changed.

Soriko hadn't.

She'd grown maybe a foot in a decade, but she still hovered at about a foot shorter than me. Besides the height, I was looking at the same girl from ten years ago, except a damn sight clearer than my blurry memory. All wavy brunette with streaks of red and pale brown eyes that were almost puppy-like in their width.

I didn't take any more time to marvel at her remarkable resemblance to her five-year-old self, but took her befuddled expression as an invitation and stepped inside.

"Hey, Soriko, do you remem—"

"I-Izari Sunako?" Soriko said, like she was guessing, as I hurriedly shut the door.

"Good guess," I assured her, leaning against the exit and examining my bleeding hands again. "I'm still impressed."

"Thanks?"

"Yeah, yeah, no problem. Soriko? I need to hide."

"I kinda figured," she said, giving me a look incongruous with her childlike features and nodding as if I'd said the most obvious damn thing in the world. That's when the pounding started like the Apocalypse knocking at Soriko's front door.

"Stand still?" Soriko said, her voice rising as if she was never certain of anything. A quick seal and a flash of chakra and I was looking at the world from a perspective six inches higher than I was used to. An examination of my hands showed them to be thick and scarred; I snatched a lock of hair, which was still long, but now scraggly and red.

"My older brother?" Soriko suggested, and went to answer the door.

I caught a few words of the conversation, but hung back like an uncertain ghost until the shinobi swarmed through Soriko's house. The girl stood next to me and I glared around at the hunters turning over every cactus needle and paper plate. I thought for damn sure they would test the jutsu Soriko'd set on me, but apparently nobody had briefed them on her abilities before they left their place of employment. They eyed me studiously and then left, one of them tipping his nonexistent hat at Soriko, another letting an apology for the search slide off her tongue.

"So, big brother?" Soriko said cheerily, turning away from the departed ninja and moving over to some stray papers tacked to the wall, corners curling to hide half-finished sketches. The transformation over me stayed in place. "What are you doing here?"

"Uh… working?"

"You're on a mission?"

"Yeah… kind of," I muttered, and went on hurriedly, "I need to get myself and one other person out of Suna and to Konoha before anyone knows we're gone. Nami said you could help."

"Aw, Sunako, really? Ya haven't seen me in ten years and you show up with a challenge? You're too kind."

"I try," I said modestly, stifling a snicker. She was being so much more helpful than Saru Nami and her damn nasty tendency to throw people off cliffs.

"What's your thing again?"

"My thing?"

"Yeah, your thing you do?"

"Oh… sand."

"Right, the sand."

"Oh, Soriko. This other person…"

"Not going ta like it, am I?"

"Sabaku no Gaara."

"Ahhh," said Soriko, nodding wisely. "You really did come just to give me a challenge? I don't deserve you. Give me a day? Then bring him here when you're ready to leave? Yeah, I think that sounds right."

"Uh," I said uncertainly, thinking of the ninja—and that damn Baki—that were entirely unlikely to be happy as sunning cats when they saw me again. "Do we have to wait a whole day?"

"Do you want this to work?" Soriko demanded, and shooed me out the door, transformation jutsu disintegrating. "A day!"

-/-

That day dragged like a wounded scorpion, though I spent it stealing provisions from the kitchen and shepherding Gaara around like a lost cow. I ducked behind every corner and half-open door whenever I heard anyone coming. Gaara, moving somewhat more sluggishly, did not seem to understand my urgency or my sudden twitchy need to hide like a frightened hare at any sound. I tried to explain how shinobi were supposed to move unseen and this was a matter of grave surreptitiousness if he wanted to get out of Konoha without Baki on our tails. I had almost forgotten that I was the one who really wanted to go to Konoha, and that Gaara was only following what I said. It seemed too damned unimportant to matter.

I didn't sleep, either. I stayed up with that damn insomniac demon, sequestered in a spare room with our food stores and our chakra masked as best I could. I had no desire to stand up and face Baki, his accusations, and his damn suspicious involvement with Saru Kanri. I would just slip out in the morning, leading Gaara and hoping to hell that I didn't end up dead in the next three days.

-/-

He thought the demon might be turning it into a game, hide and seek with a malicious laugh. The demon was moody, tempestuous, rising into a fury when it did not have the power to see and just as quickly cackling at Izari Sunako's unreasonable terror.

Gaara himself could not be sure where he stood. He wanted to join the demon's pleasure at her pain, but he wanted to crush the demon down and never think of it until it was gone. He couldn't reason the trouble the girl was going to for them to escape to Konoha—and the blood on her skin, the blood he and the Shukaku both scented from three hallways over, it spoke without a shadow of a doubt that she had gone to trouble for this.

He was walking in her shadow, and he couldn't even decide if he wanted to be there or not.


	22. A Good Dog's Mirror

**A/N: **Ah, is just me or are the FF dot Net ads getting more and more aggravating?

ANYWAY. Today is the THREE YEAR anniversary of _Sand Child_. I can't believe I've been working on this for _three years_. O.O Three years, twenty-two chapters, and one hundred eighteen reviews. Good stuff right there. Love you guys!

-/-

I told Gaara he could do whatever the hell he wanted, but I was going out that window when our day was up. He looked like he'd be about as able to climb through a window as an elephant—and about as happy to—but as soon as I deemed it late enough, I escaped just the way I said I would. I clambered through and he looked sour as spoilt milk but he damn well came after me, gourd dissolving into a sandy swamp that oozed out after him, and I resisted what might well have been an evil chuckle.

Good dog. This whole Konoha thing sure as hell was teaching him who was boss.

I had everything I thought Baki might destroy in a tornado of rage when he realized I had run off with his demon. I had my Konoha and Suna _hitai-ate_; I had the feathered mask from Eiji. I did not have any letters to save, though Eiji had promised, because I'd never received any. I'd either be chewing out that girl when I got to her damn forest or I would be throwing things at Baki when I got back to my damn desert. I wasn't entirely sure which was better for my health.

It was early, I knew. I nearly took us to Soriko's anyway, but a niggling fear bouncing around the back of my brain wouldn't direct me down her street until twenty-four hours were up. Not that I had any reason to be afraid of the girl; I could squish her like a bug, no problem, she was just that damn tiny. I really could have gone whenever the hell I wanted—

I didn't realize I was muttering darkly until Gaara's sand twitched around my ankles and dropped me to my knees.

"Well, damn," I said irritably, standing up and rubbing grit painfully out of bloody knees. "Looks like we're back at square one. I'm swearing and you're in a fine murderous mood. What say you we both settle down and pretend the other doesn't exist?"

"We are going to Konoha," Gaara said steadily.

"Oh, well done," I said scathingly. "Did it take you this long to notice?"

"It is a three day journey."

"At a steady clip," I agreed, walking off again. "We can drag it out if you _really_ want."

The sand writhed around my feet once more; I swore intentionally loudly and vehemently as the ground rushed up to meet me, but his twisted gold slave swarmed up around me like a corset, stopping me from falling, moving, and _breathing._

I coughed something irritable and the sand's grip loosened slightly. Not near enough I could go anywhere, but at least my lungs weren't dying a death of the crushed anymore.

"This will not work out if we do not… get along."

Gaara had picked up a phrase like _get along_, and _he _was telling _me_ we needed to be less violent. I made an incoherent sound of rage and grated out, "Fine, the old arrangement then." I'd really gotten so good at it, before going to see Nami. Was it her that'd jolted me back, or just that I was finally getting what I wanted? "No swearing, no dying, and no giving of orders."

"It is not the old arrangement. It is the present one."

I gnashed my teeth in order to restrain a snappy retort and growled assent. The sand relinquished its restrictive hold. I staggered sideways, regained my dignity, and folded my arms. I then fixed Gaara with a furious stare, which he completely failed to see.

Pivoting on my heel, I strode off toward Soriko's house. The only indication I gave Gaara of my direction included my stomping footsteps and a seethe.

-/-

I pounded irately on Soriko's door for a good ten minutes and nearly told Gaara to break the damn thing down, except that would have included both swearing and ordering and probably would have led to dying. She finally opened it and I nearly fell inward.

"Sorry?" she said indecisively. "I didn't notice?"

"I was very loud," I grumbled, but then, Soriko only noticed the things that didn't matter. I probably should have knocked quietly, uncertainly, and then walked away; she could very well have took that as an excellent reason to open the door. People knocking loudly wanted something. People knocking quietly didn't know what they wanted.

I stepped around Soriko, who was staring intently at Gaara. The redhead continued to stand cluelessly in the doorway like a bewildered sheep. Yesterday half-finished sketches had been in abundance in Soriko's living room; today easels filled with scribbles, pieces, and shading made it nearly impossible to walk through the place without stepping on something. I decided to stand still at the edge of the room until further notice.

Soriko had apparently invited Gaara in; she now proceeded to waltz through her living room with no regard whatsoever to her snowfield of papers. Gaara stopped when I flicked a spray of sand at him, indicating he was now standing beside me and—much as I didn't like that—he really shouldn't go any farther.

"What's your thing again?" Soriko asked merrily, gathering up a sketch or two that showed half of Gaara's head: tousled hair, dark-rimmed eyes, and sight.

I tore my gaze away from the drawings and said, "My what? Oh—sand."

"No, his."

"Oh," I said again. It seemed odder than a cucumber in a well that she didn't even know what _Gaara_ did. "Sand. But more of it."

Soriko seemed not to notice, kicking aside some scribbles that could have been anything and retrieving a piece of paper sporting what seemed to be my arm. I could tell because it was covered in silver-grey blood and shredded fishnet.

"Sunako, your fishnet was torn up yesterday, that's not essential?"

I glanced down at my arms, which were now clothed in bandages wrapped _under_ fresh fishnet. "No, I changed. Soriko, how the he—" And here we went again. "—How long is this going to take?"

"Don't you think it has to be perfect?" she murmured offhandedly, making some apparently random pencil strokes through an image of Gaara's eye with a pencil I hadn't even seen appear.

"Yes, I do," I muttered, thinking about how Baki knew I'd been near here the day before and wondering if Soriko knew what the hell was going on with Kanri down the street. "Do you know who lives in house 398?"

"Boyfriend?" Soriko asked mildly. She obviously wasn't paying attention to a damn word I was saying and Gaara flinched next to me as if he'd been bit. I almost asked him what the hell his problem was but I would have to cut out a few essential words and made it sound like I cared. I didn't.

I shifted my weight to the other foot and chewed irritably on my lip. "If you needed more than a day, you should have said—"

"Sunako, do ya really expect me to make it perfect without looking at you first?"

Great, so we were standing here posing for portraits. "Can you actually do this?"

"Can ya stop doubting me and stop talking?"

I ground my teeth together and stared at a wall. One dark eye stared back at me, not so much shaded with graphite as having graphite pounded into the paper. I glared it down for as long as I could and then quickly looked away. I leaned against a wall, turned in an uneasy circle, and said, "Do I—"

"_Yes_."

Soriko held up the paper, glancing back and forth between it and us. Her tongue touched the corner of her lip; her pencil tapped at the paper, which bent under the weight. "How much time do you two spend apart?"

I grimaced. "Not enough," I muttered. "Not very much."

"That'll make it easier?" she said cheerily, and flipped the page over to scrawl on the back of it, using her knee as support.

"Should I explain—"

"That'd be lovely!" Soriko said brightly, not looking up at me. "What _are _you doing back from Kirigakure?"

"Uh," I said. "I never went to Kirigakure."

Soriko waved her hand around, not noticing when a loose piece of lead flung itself at the wall like a fly zooming for escape. "Wherever ya been for fourteen years?"

"It's been _ten_," I said irritably. "How old do you think I am?"

"Eighteen?" she guessed, trying to draw with no lead. "You were wearing green when you left."

I got over green real fast in Konoha. "I'm starting to think this isn't going to work out," I said, aggravation dripping over my expression. "If you can't even remember how the he—old I am."

"Who's gonna ask you your age?" Soriko asked distractedly, tearing off a corner of the paper and rubbing it over the faintly-lined doodle. "Don't you trust me?"

"Less and less," I muttered, crossing my arms and leaning against the doorframe. "I've been in Konohagakure ten years, and now I'm back leading Sabaku no Gaara around because he's blind as a frog in a sandstorm."

"He's _blind?"_ Soriko asked with relish, lifting her eyes finally and gazing at the redhead in delight. I let out a frustrated, disbelieving sigh, and turned on my heel.

"Let's go, Red, we're getting out—"

"Come on, Sunako, I did my research," the tiny girl said brightly, chucking the paper over her shoulder and rifling through a stack of them. "Just wanted to see if you trust me?"

"Which I clearly don't," I grated, back still turned toward her. "Look, I'm grateful that you're helping me, but—"

"Helping _you_."

"That's what I just said."

"Plural?" Soriko asked happily, and tacked a drawing of Gaara's shoulders to the wall. One corner immediately curled over protectively, and a picture three meters down slid off like a dead moth.

"Why?" asked Gaara, and I figured I was damn near exploding due to the amount of steam hissing out between my teeth.

"_Us_," I cut in before Soriko could say anything. "Why _what_, Gaara?"

"Is she helping us?"

I waved my hand dismissively and said, "Because it's a challenge."

"Aren't you curious?" Soriko inquired, but she didn't give me breath to ask before saying, "Hold still," and pressing her hands into a series of seals I'd never seen before. Her fingers moved quick as snakes, looping and colliding, until a quick burst of chakra cloned her twice. I looked close at all three and still had no damn idea which one was the original.

"You have a Konoha headband?" said one of the tiny clones, nodding at it. "Where do you keep that?"

"Under my pillow," I muttered. "Gaara's a demon."

"Posh, Sunako, I told you I did my research." Another flurry of seals, a roar of chakra that nearly knocked me flat—where did she have _room_ for all that in her damn small body?—and I felt damn certain I was looking in a mirror. Scars, freckles, and sand—Soriko had us down to the tiniest grain. That was the tiniest bit scary as hell, considering we'd been standing here about as long as a fruit fly.

"This looks good," said the version that still looked like Soriko, which I presumed would be staying in her house to fool any nosy leeches that came looking. I didn't know if it was the real one or not; I had about as much chance of figuring that out as I did of drowning in cactus juice. "But it won't last." Her voice was dead serious, no hint of the questioning that usually touched her speech. "I don't know everything."

"So you better get your damned butts to Konoha," said the girl who looked like me, harshly, and I jumped, hitting my head on the doorframe and nearly landing on Gaara's foot. "And don't look back if you want to get there before the da—" She hesitated, a fraction of a second, changed my words like I did, and damn had she picked that up fast. "—nged avenging army comes after you."

"And say thank you…" rumbled the mirror Gaara, and the real Gaara flinched violently; he could not see his damned eerie counterpart, but he sure as hell recognized the voice. "…when you get back."


	23. Make Them Proud

**A/N: **Well, hello there. I bet many of you thought I'd forgotten about this story—actually, I bet many of _you_ had forgotten about this story. But it does live—and so do I, even if it's a struggle sometimes. ;D

I didn't actually write this chapter. That miracle goes to the lovely BattyBigSister, who was absolutely astoundingly patient and helpful to me as I fought the last couple months. She wrote this chapter in its entirety; I merely made a few punctuational corrections and the like. Please consider going to check out her stories, or at the very least, join me in showering her with gratitude. After all, it's because of her that you not only finally have a chapter, you have an extra _long_ chapter, despite my continual word count limits. Guess you can't limit inspiration. c:

Anyway, I do intend to pick up this story again; I'm about halfway through the next chapter. I can't promise weekly chapters or anything, but more frequently than every few months should definitely be in order.

Thank you for waiting, and if you are here, for returning.  
-Kit

-/-

There was something like a knot in my stomach as I watched our pair of alter-egos stride casually out the door. The blonde was swaggering like she owned the place (seriously, did I strut like that?) as she marched her stylish crimson-clad self out of Soriko's front door without so much as a wave goodbye or glance back towards her scowling companion.

Said companion started upright as he realized my clone had left him. Sand billowed out in frantic waves, latching onto her heels just as she disappeared through the entryway. Hunched over and fumbling, he hurriedly stumbled after the other me; somehow that only made him all the more pathetic, like a tooth- and claw-less tiger trying to threaten from the confines of a tiny cage. It caused another stirring in my gut and a fresh flash of guilt as my gaze passed over the real red-haired demon, his sand twitching uncertainly around him and discontent plastered on his bandaged face.

"What now?" I demanded, turning to Soriko. There was probably more force than necessary in my voice, but I really didn't care. Part of me still couldn't believe we were doing this. Baki was going to be furious when he found out—and he would find out, even I couldn't kid myself otherwise. I had no idea what the consequences were likely to be, both for me and for Gaara, but I knew they were going to be as terrible as only that veiled man could dream up… and still the red-headed kid had agreed to come along with me. Sullen, silent and staring sightlessly at my back, probably plotting my murder, but still he was there; I shivered involuntarily.

Soriko, on the other hand, seemed oddly happy. "Time to go," she offered, stretching as she gave me an airy wink. "This way?" Her midget frame leapt across her cluttered living room with a delight that appeared almost criminal. I followed rather more hesitantly.

Then, suddenly, on impulse, I turned, stretching my fingertips into one of Gaara's grainy tendrils of sand. It scattered as if I had bitten it. The kid visibly shrank backwards away from me. Well… thanks for that. Blame a girl for being nice.

I gritted my teeth. "Come on," I muttered, keeping my voice calm. My eyes had locked on the floor and to my eternal humiliation my face felt oddly warm. Not that the sand demon himself was likely to notice, but—dammit—I could virtually feel Soriko smirking behind me. "There're easels and stuff. I'll show you where to walk."

Hesitantly, like an abused animal, a few stray kernels of grit brushed gently over my digits and bounced away again, as if checking to see if they would be met with kindness or the smack of a rolled-up newspaper. It was really testing my patience. I turned away, taking a step forward, but leaving my hand trailing out behind me.

Gaara's footsteps sounded loudly on the hard stone floor and sand dusted my fingers almost imperceptibly. I moved again and let him follow me through the maze of discarded papers and drawing equipment. It was arduous slow work and all the more so once we got outside and into the dark side alleys of Sunagakure, Soriko waving goodbye from her doorway. Tall curved walls closed in around us as we squeezed through spaces that seemed more like architectural miscalculation than genuine pathways. Gaara seemed testy, locked in by the porous stone and dusty air, but he didn't hit any walls. I kept as close to the redhead as I could without violating his personal space and getting myself torn limb from limb for the privilege. In turn, he seemed to grasp the need to keep his sand flow relatively in check, making it look as natural as possible as he brushed my back and ankles with stay grains of sand, following my lead.

Surprisingly, we made out through Suna's streets with less trouble than I had anticipated. The few people who passed by us were busy or preoccupied with other things and didn't pay too much attention to two lone figures drifting through the shadows. It helped that Gaara was also a much better shinobi than I had ever given him credit for. He kept so quiet that I occasionally had to turn my head just to check he was still there. The gate itself—a long dark gouge in the sheer stone cliff-face—was a little trickier to manoeuvre, but just as I was about to worry, the guards got into an argument with some merchant and his pair of spit-happy camels, giving us just the opening we needed to slip by them without any hassle.

The long dark tunnel fell away like some forgotten nightmare and then... there was desert. Thick golden of waves of endless damn sand stretched out in front of us, rolling their way into the shimmering distance. Way off in the distance a hint of darkness was already kissing those bronzed peaks, like some kitten curling up around its favourite blanket.

It seemed like years since I'd last stood out here, seen the sky without Suna's thick stone walls hemming me in, and the mere taste of freedom was damn near killing me. Hell, I was out here, wasn't I? And there wasn't a damn thing Baki or his minions could do about it. Well, okay, there was. Quite a bit actually, if we were going to get technical, unless we started to put some real distance between ourselves and the hidden village really soon now.

"Let's go," I muttered, kicking forward and feeling the rush of slipping sand beneath my feet. It glided under my sandals as I started to run and I threw my arms back, feeling the rush of warm air over my bandages and fishnets and the weight of my own momentum from the bounce of my ponytail and the many attachments on my belt. Balmy wind washed over my face, like breath from … well, from something that was breathing right at me, and I could concentrate on nothing but the feel of my legs kicking through grainy clouds of sand in a steady pulsing rhythm.

Sand tickled my toes and a heady warmth washed my body; it took a while before I even noticed that my companion was still there with me, keeping pace with my endless race through the drifting desert. Gaara was loping slightly, but still surprisingly fast as he moved several feet behind me apparently gaining confidence with every step. His sand whipped through the air in front of him like his own private sandstorm, tasting the open space as he ran towards it, sensing out his path with ever increasing accuracy.

I turned away, my feet grinding out a beat as heavy as my heartbeat. My shins were starting to feel a little tense too. They'd be sore later. Months of doing nothing but wandering around hallways hadn't exactly kept me in shape; another worrying thing for someone who was meant to be a ninja.

A thought occurred to be vaguely at the memory of our disappearing hometown, a troubling contemplation of the chances of pursuit. Would Soriko's deception work? What if her clones were found out? What about tracks and stuff? As far as I could tell the night was relatively calm; the sand sucked at my feet with apparent gusto and I imagined we were leaving quite the trail.

Glancing behind me, however, I felt like a fool for worrying. Gaara's pounding tendril-like feelers were lashing at the sand right up to our heels and for yards to the sides, whipping it up into a furious cloud of whirling dust… and then it settled again behind him, a flawless blanket of golden yellow. Thanks to my blind demon puppy dog, we were now disappearing into the night, as seamlessly as if we had never been there at all.

-/-

When I woke up it was to find myself covered in sand. My body was bitingly sore, every limb stiff and heavy like a plank of wood. The pain tingled through me as every single muscle ached. The slightest movement of my neck seemed to yank on cramped and knotted sinews and my head felt like it was about to explode, pounding so hard it left me feeling dizzy and nauseous.

Rolling rather limply onto my hands and knees, I spat out a mouthful of sand and fumbled for one of the canteens I had swiped from the Kazekage's kitchen. Heat hit me like a burning blanket as the sand fell away, striking mercilessly down onto my clothed back. My lips caressed the hard plastic rim of the container, sucking out the water before my quivering fingers had a chance to raise it enough to let the contents pour instead.

With the first few gulps of lukewarm life-giving fluid, I started to feel better. The vertigo cleared as the liquid soaked its way down my throat. I blinked, allowing the world to slide back into focus as I sat up. Endless streams of blinding soft white surrounded me, rippling fine dust at the slightest stir in the air. The sun cascaded molten gold out of a clear blue sky and the gentlest touch of it was easing the stiffness from my aching limbs, letting me feel awake and alive again. I stretched my toes in the welcome warmth, taking another long sip of water as the sun hit my stomach and I toppled back onto my one free arm, closing my eyes as my ponytail swung loosely behind me.

Of course, when I opened them again it was to be met with the sight of 'him of the desert' over there, apparently meditating on top of an unnaturally square pillar of sand. His skin seemed practically luminescent in the bright blue of the sky, and his messy blood-red hair moved as gently as the rippling of the dunes. How he stood the sun in his ever-present black t-shirt and long trousers I would never know, even with the once-white sash wrapped around his body. His arms were bare, but then I supposed the layer of sand armour worked as effectively as any sunscreen. The angled line of his chin and the dark shadows of his bandaged eyes though were the most relaxed I had ever seen them… Well, damn. We couldn't have that.

"Hey! Want some?" I yelled, jerking the circular canteen in his direction purely to disturb his peace.

He tensed. I could actually see the way his brow knotted as his head moved a millimetre in my direction. Oh, yes… I'd forgotten he couldn't see. "Water," I added lamely, letting the fluid splash tellingly on the inside of the can.

The sand pillar crumpled gently downwards, depositing him on his feet. It was such an exaggeratedly artful spectacle that I felt like throwing something at him to ruin it, but I refrained on the off-chance that the sudden burst of sand rushing around me would do more than tug the water canister from my fingers.

Sitting up, I rummaged in my pack for my purloined supplies of food. "Bread?" I offered vaguely, biting into a stale crusty roll even as I spoke. He shook his head vaguely, twisting the cap off the water bottle with one hand. "Anything else?" I added, still with my mouth full. It wasn't like he could tell, "I think these are … pickles of some description. Oh, cookies!"

He shook his head more vigorously this time, a faint hint of disgust in his expression as he jerked the canteen up against his mouth. Not that I felt I could blame him, as I took a bite from a suspiciously damp cookie to find it penetrated with pickling vinegar. It made for an… interesting… combination to say the least. I stretched vaguely and started stuffing the remains of breakfast back into my bag, adjusting my clothes and shaking sand from places I'd rather it wasn't.

That was when it hit me. My fingers froze, still locked around elastic cotton thread. Slowly I stood upright again, feeling the colour draining from my face. I glanced around at the billowing white landscape once more, then up at the sky. My eyes widened as my lips started to quiver. I really _was_ a moron.

Gaara glanced in my direction, as if he was scrutinising me with those sightless eyes, some sixth sense warning him of the panic welling up inside me. My muscles tightened involuntary and my fingers tingled with sudden adrenaline. I really couldn't be this stupid.

It was as if I'd somehow forgotten all the training drummed into me during those mind-numbing lessons in Konoha academy, the sheer basics that even the dumbest and most inexperienced of genin had to have mastered. I didn't know the way. We were lost.

Sure, I had been trained to navigate all sorts of terrain, but it had been years since I had used that knowledge anywhere other than the familiar forests of the Land of Fire. That all required gaining a point of vantage, looking for landmarks: impossible in the desert. The sun was too close to the summit for me to tell where it might be rising or setting, and I was lost as to where north might be. The one thing I had forgotten to do last night was check the stars. All these years, all those dumb missions, I had followed Eiji and others blindly to our destination, forgetting in the process the basic skills I would need if I ever became the one to lead.

Suddenly all those things I had thought, those things I had said, about Raiyo flashed back through my mind. The way I had asserted that he would the one to die first, finish young as an incompetent shinobi… and yet here I was, lost in the desert with limited food, limited water and a violent, blind jinchuuriki I had roped into this mess with me. Raiyo could grow old and grey yet for all I knew.

Gaara was looking at me, by now I was sure of it. He might not be _seeing_ me, per se, but his square brow was furrowed and I was the unquestionable object of his attention. What should I tell him? Sorry, I screwed up? No hard feelings, right…?

I sighed, fingering the soft feathers of the mask Eiji had given me as a parting gift. The sun was burning down on my back and I squinted, trying to collect my thoughts. First order of business, if we could not go onwards today then we couldn't go onwards today. That was all there was to it. This evening I would be able to my bearings back by the setting sun and stars, until then we were just going to have to wait – always assuming a certain someone didn't kill me in a fit of temper when he found out about the mess I had gotten us into.

For now, some kind of decent shelter would be a good idea, as would extra food and water if we could manage that. I tried to think back to vague lessons back in a stuffy Konoha classroom, trying to remember prattle about a desert that had seemed far too far away at the time. Gaara undoubtedly knew more than me. The question was would he tell me if I asked or would he just let me suffer out of spite for my own incompetence?

He was still looking at me. I coughed ambiguously, as a cue for him to speak. My sightless companion tilted his head in the direction of the sound, his forehead wrinkling still further.

"Shall we go now?" he inquired with what seemed to be palpable effort. "Are you ready to leave?" Well, blow me, dammit. He appeared to be making a conscious effort to be nice. It seemed almost painful as he forced his tone to stay calm and his features to remain relaxed. Hell, it was painful watching him try… It was worse knowing what I would have to tell him.

My silence seemed to be irritating the red-head. "Konoha is this way," he snapped, jerking his shoulder in what seemed like an exasperated reminder to get moving. "It will not become closer by standing here."

I couldn't stop my jaw from dropping, as something seemed to tumble out of the pit of my stomach. "How…?" My arms fell limply to my sides as I gaped at him. The sheer relief was actually making me dizzy. I couldn't believe I had been saved so easily. Gaara had accidently revealed the information before I told him I was lost—meaning that he never need know there had been a problem and I was that much less likely to be ripped apart by a burst of angry sand.

"I do not become disorientated in the desert," he informed me coldly; the ire was tangible now and his fingers were twitching with the desire to summon his sand. The sight made me collect myself rather sharply. "Even without eyes." He thought I was belittling his abilities... and honestly, given what the truth was, I had no desire to disillusion him.

"Then let's go." I shrugged good-naturedly, making sure to wave a hand in his personal sand cloud as I trudged passed. My head and neck were already comfortably warm under the blazing sun and I stretched out my arms in delight as balmy sand rubbed up against my toes. Endless white swirled out in front of me and I laughed in delight, feeling thoroughly at peace with the world.

-/-

This did not last long. Sore and sun-burned, several hours later, I was still charging along after Gaara and wondering if I would ever be able to rescue my damn sandals after this. My legs chafed and grubby yellow sediment coated my feet, a mixture of sand and sweat that ground uncomfortably into the lining of my shoes. Hell, I would have blisters before long, I just knew it. Squinting my eyes against the impossibly bright sun, my throat parched and my lungs burning from the dry desert air, I gulped occasional sips of water that never seemed to go far enough and trusted myself blindly to the instincts of my companion, hoping that he could feel his way through the endless white-gold wasteland that he could no longer see.

The sun was low on the horizon before we stopped. Long red rays traced the endless mounds of molten gold, making them shimmer like precious treasure, but here and there the black wispy outlines of shrubs and grasses were starting to spoil the illusion. We were approaching the edge of the desert. Gaara had settled himself cross-legged on a large protruding rock, and glancing underneath I found a waterhole of some sort.

I couldn't tell if we had stopped here by design or not, and frankly I didn't care. My shoulders were red-raw. My feet were killing me. Kneeling in the dusty ground, I cupped my hands in the murky liquid and poured it against my chapped lips, guzzling hungry gulps of fluid before it disappeared between my fingers. Wincing as the water hit my scorched skin, I splashed more over myself, hissing against the sharp sting of each droplet on my ruined flesh. Kicking my sandals from my throbbing feet, I breathed deeply, still drinking heavily.

Sitting up, I gasped for air and sat back, absently thrusting my empty canister into the still pond and contemplated well... myself. For somebody born in the desert, I sure as hell was doing a pretty damn lousy job of living there. Too many years in the milder climate of Konoha had robbed me of whatever I had known about survival out in this landscape and—given that I had been five—I doubted that had been much to start with. Without Baki to give me reluctant scraps of advice or aid, as he had done on the way here when I was too preoccupied with Gaara to care about much else anyway, I was struggling to do even the simplest things for myself. Hell, I was even failing at tasks I had no excuse for not being able to manage, like finding my way around. My teachers in the academy would be mortified if they knew. Without Gaara, I'd have been in much worse shape than I was.

I gave the redhead a reluctant once over. He was still meditating on his rock and apparently ignoring me. The forest couldn't be far away now, if the increase in plant-life was any indication. Gaara had been struggling more and more for the last couple of hours. Stray twigs and grasses had kept slapping against his legs, whipped up by his increasingly furious pounding sand. I had taken over the lead and tried to keep him away from the worst of it, but even so he seemed about as tired as I felt. His head was drooping slightly on his shoulders and his breathing echoed at deeply irregular intervals from his slumped back.

Leaving him be, I set about making camp. There was enough thicket around for a semi-decent campfire and I figured if I dug myself a little trench in the sand I could cover up enough to keep myself sufficiently warm during the night. I may not have the usual desert knowledge of someone raised in Suna, but I could damn well learn.

The sky was still dark overhead when I woke up, kicking away the layers of sand and dead leaves I'd used to keep myself warm. Once upon a time, I had owned a neat little scroll that summoned a nice comfy sleeping bag and a few other items necessary for a comfortable camp. It disappeared from my room within weeks of arrival in Suna. I couldn't help the feeling that it had been taken on purpose, probably to prevent me from running away. It wasn't a happy feeling, knowing that they had taken those but not touched my weapons supply at all, as if they expected me to need to be armed even inside the Kazekage's mansion.

Gaara stirred almost as soon as I did, watching me with his sightless gaze as I blew life back into the smouldering remains of last night's fire. He even ate breakfast with me after I goaded him a piece of dried fish I had discovered in the bottom of my pack.

The sun was barely meeting the horizon when we got back under way, a deep red stretching out over the dusty dunes. By midday we seemed to be moving across more grass than not, and before long I could spot the first few very undesert-like trees, clumped together in small knots.

Cicadas were singing in the background and the occasional bird called its mate as the landscape burst into life around us. Long grasses and meadow weeds, bedecked with flowers brushed across my legs as I ran. The long spindly wooden arms of wild brushes and shrubs reached up towards the sky and the trees were coming thick and fast now as we entered the outskirts of the ancient forests. There was an awful familiarity about it that sat badly in the back of my throat as we moved further into the new terrain. Compared to my helplessness out in the desert—_my_ desert, dammit, the desert I was named for—this was too much like coming back into my element. It didn't sit well with me. The forest wasn't my territory by any choice of mine and I sure as hell wasn't about to be at home in it—except that I was, far more so than in my desert. Ten years will do that to you.

The change in scene wasn't suiting Gaara either for that matter. He was furious. His sand pounded the ground as if it had done him a personal wrong, wrecked pieces of plantlife flying up around him like a very indiscriminate combine harvester. The sand twisted ferociously in the air around his head, shredding and grinding the stray pieces until they were nothing more than dust dancing with the spiraling sand around him. I guided him as best I could with a few blood-laden grains, but he seemed to be purposefully resisting me, fighting back against a need to be led.

Our progress had slowed considerably. Open sunlight had become rarer as the canopy enveloped us like lost children, covering us with speckled shade. Gaara's whirling sand was now awash with different golds and browns as the meadow grass gave way to forest floor littered with dead leaves and detritus. Each grain cut through the air like a knife, leaving welts in my skin any time I drew too close. The angry cloud ripped through anything it touched, tearing away stray branches and anything else that got in its way, crushing and grinding them until there was nothing left. My own sand was lost in the haze, mere fruit flies in the golden tornado ripping through the forest undergrowth. It twitched helplessly as it was buffeted through the storm, barely able to respond to my chakra commands and utterly ignored by the person it was trying to help.

I finally snapped. The redhead nearly collided with his third tree and I lost it, yanking my sand back away from his with sudden force. "Enough," I gasped, resting my hands on my knees as I wheezed for air. He turned in my direction, where he must have felt the sand disappear, surprise keeping him still. "Look," I mumbled, still doubled over, "do you wanna take a break for a bit?" My stray grains of sand fell unhelpfully at my feet, resisting every attempt I made to move them. Gaara's expression leaked disdain. There was a deep gorge cut into the trunk of the tree behind him, fresh resin dripping from the wound.

"It's just a break, okay," I muttered, running a hand across my bangs to find them damp with sweat. "Sit down, have some water or something..." The sand made an unhappy lunge in my direction, stopping within touching distance of my head.

I sprang backwards, nearly losing my balance. A branch collided sharply with my head and I growled in frustration. "It was just a suggestion. A suggestion!" I snapped, waving my hand in front of me as if to push away both the invading gold and its wielder. "Look, you said it yourself, this isn't going to work if we don't get along. I'm trying to help you here, but you're not exactly making it easy."

The sand retreated slowly, swirling around its master in thick golden ribbons. Gaara appeared to be contemplating my words. "And you are... tired," he murmured at last, so low I could barely hear him.

"Well... yeah..." I sighed, relaxing slightly. My hands slid back down to my thighs and I heaved another few deep breaths; battling a resistant Gaara had taken it out of me whether I liked it or not.

There was a sharp crease on his forehead. "Of helping me."

"What? No. Well..." I corrected myself lamely, considering the amount of truth in his statement. "Look, it just takes a lot of chakra, okay?" I sighed, flopping down against a nearby tree trunk. "And blood. And effort."

"Pathetic," he said, turning away.

I felt my eyes narrow with the heat rising to my face. "You can talk... I'm not the one who needs guiding everywhere."

A sharp burst of sand smacked into the tree over my head, resin, bark, and sawdust flying out and settling in my hair. My heart pounding with more surprise than I was ever going to let him know about, my gaze swept upwards just in time to see the sand disperse. There was a fresh cut several inches deep in the trunk above me. "Are you done?" I enquired, reaching for my canteen and taking a long swig of the slightly stale water inside. It was damn impressive how calm I kept my voice, considering how much I wanted to just get the hell out of here. Part of me wondered why I didn't.

Gaara was facing me, his fists shaking, but he said nothing and sat grudgingly down upon the ground. His arms were crossed over his folded legs and his head deliberately turned away from where he had last heard my voice. Every so often the sand around him twitched, deliberately throwing up small flurries of leaves and earth.

Wonderful. The demon-wielder was sulking. I had to suppress a sardonic snort as I took another sip of water.

The taste made me cringe slightly. That would definitely need replacing before long. Tucking the canister back against my belt, my eyes lingered on the tree that had been unfortunate enough to get in Gaara's way earlier. If I was right, there should probably be a pool of rainwater in the knothole of one of the branches. Should that prove unsuitable, then I had a good feeling there might be a stream or something a little east of here. There were some trees in that direction that liked a good supply of groundwater, and one of them, I noticed, had some nuts that looked almost ready to eat.

Staggering to my feet, I shook the assorted rubbish out of my hair and rebound my ponytail. The _hitai-ate_ on my belt knocked slightly against my thigh as I straightened the one on my forehead. I may not have chosen my past in Konoha, but I couldn't deny it was useful. It had taken two hidden villages to raise me into a shinobi. I was just going to have to live with that fact and do my best to make both of them proud.

"Hey," I called, glancing at my still sulking companion as I returned from my foraging trip, "don't freak out, okay? I'm going to have to come pretty close to you if we're going to make it through this forest."

By taking my position behind him as I had done on the way towards Suna, and with an awful lot of rest stops, we arrived only slightly battered and acceptably weary on a road that made my heart quicken with familiarity. Towering up ahead of us, seemingly unchanged in years, were the great gate of Konohagakure, giant green doors wide open and welcoming the road that flowed straight through them. I couldn't wipe the grin off my face.

-/-

A stray gust of sand caught the breath from her lips as he allowed it to play freely in the night breeze. He shivered involuntarily and called it away.

She was less easy to find here in the forest than she had been out in the desert. There her warmth had bled into the sand like a beacon, constantly alerting him to her presence in the chill of the night. It was an extra aid he had not needed anyway, with the continual rhythm of her breathing and the occasional grunting snore being more than enough to remind him of her continued existence. She might easily have frozen to death that first night had he not summoned sand to cover her and mixed it with his own chakra to keep out the cold. He wondered why he had done that.

The demon had been content to laugh at her plight. The familiar voice had broken up his night as always: raging and laughing and then, strangely, taunting him in a way it had not attempted for years, by use of an affected high-pitched voice that imitated the mother its host had never known.

Here in the forest the only sand was that they carried with them and the subtle noises that spoke of her life were often drowned out by the rustling of leaves in the wind, the chirping of insects and the calls of wild animals. For some reason he missed the sound of her now that it was denied to him. He missed her presence here in an unfamiliar night, with nothing but the jeering of the demon in his head for company. Left alone, he missed her and he hated himself for it.


	24. Home in the Hornet's Nest

**A/N: **Hey, y'all! I just wanted to let you know that I've actually been published and paid for it—if you want to see if you like my original writing as much as my fanfiction, head over to sorceroussignals dot com and check out the current issue. ;D My story's called "Synthesizing Hearts," if you're interested.

And, as usual, thanks for sticking with me! I only really have writing time/motivation once a week, and due to the length of _Sand Child_ chapters, that makes them a bit long in the coming even with my determination to keep going, so I apologize as profusely as you can imagine.

Love,

Kit

-/-

I stood regarding the gates of Konoha until the demon beside me grew sharp and restless. It was not indecision; I knew damn well I wanted to go in there. It was rather—ah, hell, it was probably just the need to irritate Gaara. I'd succeeded, judging by his sand-soft rustling beside me.

And the moment stretched like a tortured slug, from contemplating Konoha and Gaara's state-of-mind to my own self-preservational skills. I was being a damn fool, and that needed to change, sure as the desert was dry. Determined to soothe the restless beast, I started forward, at the exact moment one of the gate guards apparently decided we could have no reason for standing so long outside the village unless we had suspicious motives. Goes to show what he knew, never fathoming that two travelers could ever have such a devoted relationship based entirely on driving each other to homicidal scheming.

"Who are you?" the guard called down from the arch over the entryway. "State your business."

I stared up at him, eyes narrowed against the glare of the dappled Konoha sun, then unknotted my Konoha _hitai-ate_ from my belt and raised it toward the sky.

"Izare Sunako," I said loudly, mostly failing to hide a smirk. "Shinobi business." He squinted down at the Konoha leaf and waved us through; I gave Gaara's sand a jaunty tug and sauntered past the gate.

Hell yes. That's the kind of reception shinobi should receive. Unquestioning welcome. Not exploding firepots.

It was time to mix business with pleasure: I aimed myself arrow-true for Eiji's house. The most direct route took use down the main thoroughfare at rush hour—no issue for _me¸ _of course, I knew the way to weave between the storm of bees intent on their shopping. But three feet through the mess, I realized Gaara was a wasp seconds away from stinging all the other bees to death. His sand zipped around him in little lightning flashes of orbit, tense and quavering—but somehow not attacking the strangers that bumped into and grumbled at him in voices dark as mourning. I tempted myself to leave him in the flow, stupid-curious as to how long he'd last. But sure as snow I'd be caught in the overflow of murderous rage when the damn demon came out, and I had scars enough for now.

Grimacing, I flicked at a few grains of sand within his array, gesturing him toward the street's lonely edge. He turned, movement jerky as an ungreased hinge, and collided spectacularly with a man the size of a manor. It wasn't his size that sent alarm to pulse in my veins; it was the words that snapped, hornet-angry, from his mouth.

I, being not a hero, hesitated for the length of a bear's breath. But I couldn't subject the citizens of Konoha to a terrified demon's wrath, and my chances of survival were damn small anyway. My hand lashed out, catching Gaara's shoulder. Sand twisted into it, burrowing for blood; I didn't let go, though agony burned deep, but used the newly red-soaked sand to help haul him toward the wall.

"Breathe, kid, breathe," I muttered through teeth gritted against gnawing pain, and because he didn't need any further violent stress, I added a _please_. "Hey, Red, that's my flesh you're undermining."

I nearly had him free of the crowd when the sand slackened its assault, worrying at my skin but no longer eating into it. I relaxed half a fraction, and to my surprise, Gaara did the same, mountain-solid muscles in my grip loosening a leaf's-breath. Steering him around the last of the main road's graceless feet, I pressed him up against a splintery wooden wall and said, "Hey, you breathing?"

"Yes." The answer came shortly, raspily, but not reluctantly.

"It's a good start," I said. "The nerve of some people. Flipping halfway to heaven because of an accident."

"His brow furrowed slightly beneath his bandages, and then, almost as if he understood, he nodded. I raised an eyebrow and said, "Sure, I guess we can go away less crowded than the summer sunset."

Before I could turn and redirect him, I was hailed by a voice not-yet unfamiliar with absence. "Sunako, you come home and hang around flirting with cute redheads before you even come see me?"

I whipped around so fast that my ponytail flicked into Gaara's face, though he didn't so much as flinch, protected by his gritty mask. Eiji's name snapped out of my mouth, followed by, "Who, this kid?" The gods themselves had to be damn surprised I stopped myself from adding an insult, but I felt Gaara wasn't yet recovered enough to condone the risk of further injury.

Instead, I said hastily, "We were on our way to your house."

"I'm not there," Eiji said needlessly, making her way toward us, glacier-blue eyes focused on the place where my battered fingers still clutched Gaara's shoulder. She scooted up against the wall next to me, eyed us critically, and said, "Looks like true love to me."

My hand flinched away from Gaara so fast I almost missed his startled wince, though the bewildered twitching of his sand couldn't have been more obvious if it had been Gaara himself dancing naked with _"CONFUSION" _painted across his chest. It concerned me briefly that I could decipher the infinitesimal movements of Gaara's dirt as bewildered—what the hell made those tiny jerky movements different than the ones I witnessed when he was angry or homicidal? (Assuming, of course, that those emotions were different in him—which, so far as I had seen, they sure weren't.) I released the train of thought quickly.

"You need your eyes checked," I informed my best friend. "If that's your first impression." She allowed herself a grin, confirming for me that she'd been kidding, and slid a thumbnail between her front teeth. The familiar gesture struck me like a toppling chimney, and I grabbed her wrist, pulling her hand away from her mouth. For some reason, it was the closest alternative to a hug I could allow myself in front of Gaara—though the damn redhead couldn't see us, and I couldn't think of any reason to care if he could.

"Wanna show us to a ramen dinner?" I asked her, homesick grin curling the corners of my lips. "We've been subsisting off pickled cookies and snakes for a few days, and it's da—shed unpleasant memories, let me be the first to tell you."

Eiji snorted. "Your metaphors don't make any more sense than they did when you left, I see."

"That wasn't a metaphor, Eiji."

"Oh, well." I caught a hummingbird-flicker in her eyes and thought she was struggling with the shinobi code of conduct, trying not to laugh. "Let's get dinner."

She straightened up and I slung an arm around her shoulder, my concession to her evident internal rules of no further emotion here, in public. "Missed you, Eij."

"Welcome home, Sunako," she said, one fist on her hip—and, strange as a dog in a tree, I didn't contradict her.

-/-

It wasn't until we were face-deep in bowls of Konoha's finest ramen that I finally hit the 'business' portion of our visit. Gaara was having some difficulty managing his slippery noodles; not wanting Eiji to start laughing and invoke his murdering mood, I brought up the Chûnin Exams.

"So, Eiji, what's the next test?"

"Test?"

"Chûnin Exams, Eij. We came to see what's holding up the process."

"You mean you didn't just come to see me?" She purposely slurped a mouthful of noodles as gracelessly as a cat who can't find its way out of a blanket and raised her eyebrows, as if to ask why the hell I _wouldn't_ come just to see her. "Chûnin Exams have been over for ages, hun."

"Oh." I stared at her for half a moment, then completely forgot the reason I had asked about the Exams in the first place. "Did you make chûnin?"

She tossed her hair out of another bite of ramen, then grinned up at me. "Do you have to ask? Hell yes I did."

Beside me, Gaara twitched; I scooted a little closer to the counter, blocking him from Eiji's view, and otherwise ignored him while I kept my delighted shriek to the barest minimum. The restaurant's other patrons threw me a variety of glances, but no way I could contain excitement at _that _news. It explained, too, her heightened determination to follow the rules of shinobi conduct—to prove she deserved the promotion, though we both knew she did.

After I'd put my elbow in my ramen bowl out of delirious exhilaration, we both took breaths and I asked quietly, "Did Raiyo make chûnin?"

She snorted, responding with another "Do you have to ask?" I shook my head with the slightest roll of my eyes, then queried hesitantly, "Did Raiyo… die?"

Eiji actually laughed before she contained herself; I took that as a good sign, though I didn't relax until she said, "No. Came near, but no."

I was mere seconds from demanding a play-by-play, but Eiji didn't seem intent on the subject; she changed it. "Why _did_ you come back, Sunako?"

"If the Chûnin Exams are over," I said, "then to find out what's taking this redhead's teammates so bloody long to return from them."

Eiji shoved her ramen bowl away and slid her nail back between her teeth, seeming not to notice that talking would have been a damn sight easier without it there. "There's a rumor," she said slowly, "that the siblings from the Sand are being detained for questioning. With regards to a plot against Konoha."

I had less than a moment to absorb that one before Gaara spoke for the first time in Eiji's presence.

"There isn't one," he said.

I whirled on him, disrupting the dregs of my dinner for a second time, but Eiji picked up the conversation as if it were five thousand ryo she didn't want someone else to get first. "Isn't a rumor? There certainly is, I should know." Her eyes glinted an alarmingly smug shade of ice.

"There is not a plot against Konoha," Gaara said, immune to her tone.

"How do you know?" I snapped, a hair away from desperate, and he turned his bandaged face towards me like some sightless monster questing for breath to steal. A moment's silence took him, as if he didn't know whether to tell me or not.

"There was," he said finally. "It failed three years ago."

I frowned, trying to line the pronouncement up with some fragment of evidence. The closest I came was recalling aloud: "That was the last time the Exams were held in Konoha." Aruno-sensei hadn't entered us for some fool reason I couldn't even bring to the _back_ of my mind.

"Yes."

"And it… failed."

Eiji had both palms flat on the counter while she watched Gaara intently. I noticed a few grains of sand hovering by my ear independent of my will and they dropped into my abused bowl.

"Yes." He seemed more reluctant to say it this time, and I wondered with a sudden bitter anger if he regretted it. I was sure as a summer storm that I'd be bring it up again later, dragging the tale out of him, but that confrontation promised violence. And while my _self _-preservational skills were muddy, no way in all the desert fires would I risk Eiji the same way.

"Well." I leaned back slightly and folded my arms. "We'll just have to meet with the Hokage. Explain that it's over." I shot Gaara sharpened-steel look. "It _is_ over?"

It took him a moment to register that I'd addressed _him_, and then he responded with another "Yes."

"Then she'll see it was all a dithering misunderstanding and we'll get your teammates back."

Eiji snorted. "You, meet with the Hokage? Sorry, Sunako, you're genin she owes no responsibility to. It'll take you a week to see her."

She was, blast it to all oblivions, correct. But stubborn as a sideways tree, I said anyway, "We'll just have to try."

-/-

Eiji was wrong, turns out. The earliest convenience at which Tsunade would deign to see the genin she'd kicked to the roadside and the redheaded monster she'd abandoned me to was _three_ weeks.

We sure as snow didn't _have_ three weeks. If Baki weren't already after us, he would be soon. Soriko hadn't guaranteed us any amount of time, and with the six-day round-trip travel time, I could hazard a guess at only a few pallidly inadequate days in Konoha.

Damn. And I wanted to say it out loud, but I didn't.

Gaara and I were holed up in a lone abandoned apartment building, which basically comprised Konoha's seedier side. I was broker than a salt merchant at sea and thus couldn't afford lodgings, and I'd turned down Eiji's offer out of stomach-boiling fear. She'd probably guess we were here if she needed me, but she also knew to leave well enough alone.

"Gaara." I surveyed him across an ominously hungry hole in the floor. "Do you want to rescue your teammates?"

"No."

This caught me a gallon more off-guard than it should have. Had I actually been expecting compassion or attachment from him? Only when the desert sprouted a rainforest. "Well, that makes things a darn sight easier. Might as well go home then."

I quashed a pang of reluctance, stomping on that bee in my head that buzzed, _This is really your home_. I knew it better here, I'd accepted that, but I couldn't _have_ two homes. I'd already started to move when he added, "Should I?"

I thought fiercely of Eiji—then of Raiyo, who I'd ruined—and even of Aruno-sensei, and said, "Yes," before I caught myself, shrugged, and said, "But I don't care, so we can go."

"Why?"

"Look, Red, I'm not the best person to learn morals from, I get my fun tormenting someone who wants to kill me."

That stubborn sightless stare unnerved me into doing what he wanted every time. I scowled and said, "Because they're your family."

"I do not think of them as that."

"And I can't change that."

"But your teammates… that girl, Eiji… they are not your family."

"Not—hang on." I frowned until I thought the wrinkles in my brow were going to cut my face in half. "Are you saying your teammates really _are_ your family? By blood?" He started to respond, but I charged on, mostly to myself. "Should I have known that? _Did_ I know that?" I couldn't remember being told, but it was a connection I must have made, unless I was dumb as a post in the sand. I chalked it up to not leaving in Suna for ten years.

Shrugging it off, I stood up, oblivious to the curiously eager bounce of the rotting floorboards. "With family you're obligated to go," I muttered, trying to ignore the sudden roaring memory of my mother. I'd never thought to pursue that obligation for her, instead leaving her to spoil in that house. Damn it, she'd never even entered into my calculations when I considered coming back to this village. And here I was, preaching in the other direction to Gaara.

I shook off the pervasive blanket of discomfort that brought about and started to rescind my demands that he count himself obligated. Hell, I _didn't_ care, we _should_ just leave. I was pacing anxious circles around him, the sort of motion that usually drew his sand into a nervous lather. It remained oddly calm, like a still patch of water in a tornado-tossed sea, and I opened my mouth to jibe when a soft splintery crunch interrupted me and my stomach swooped up to writhe in my throat.


	25. Remnants of a Storm

**A/N: **Just wanted to warn you that the next chapter might not be _quite_ as on time as the past two have managed to be; I'm about three weeks away from moving (permanently) across the country, and the packing is… not done. And instead of doing it, I'm busy trying to cram in as much time as possible with everyone I know from my hometown. Which may push the writing to a less-than-weekly backburner.

HOWEVER. This story is only a few chapters from completion (or I intend it to be), so do not fear: I am not going on another many-month hiatus this close to the end. I'll still be working, just _slightly_ more slowly again. (:

Love, as always,  
Kit

-/-

Actually, it turned out that my stomach had stayed right where it belonged; it was the rest of my blasted body that plummeted, ending in the same result of my stomach and throat being too damn well acquainted.

The weathered floorboards had split like wet graham crackers beneath me, something I would have expected had I paid a flea's worth of attention. Splinters scraped through my hair and snagged on fishnet; the fact that I was still falling told me that Gaara already wasn't going to stir himself and his molten desert to do a damn thing about it.

Well, fine. I'd fallen a distance the gods wouldn't have laughed at when Nami had thrown me off her cliff; a four-story rotting apartment building was no disaster. I crashed through the next level of soft wood, blinking back sparks in my vision as my head bounced, and then managed to flip over so I would land like a cat rather than an overturned turtle. Gathering a coil of chakra into my hands and feet—and doing a heck of a better job at it, after all that instruction I had cliff-diving—I braced myself for the next plane of floor.

I nearly nailed the landing, until my foot went through a hole the size of my fist. My ankle twisted as I tried to thrash free, and the weary old wood wasn't up to the task of supporting a round of panicky seizures. I dropped again, swearing—mildly—at least determined that the floor beneath me was on solid ground, and probably wouldn't send me any lower.

A smug pleasure seized me as I realized I was on-target for a perfect, silent touchdown, the kind that outstripped even the one I'd missed on the floor above. A moment later, a wash of gold painted my peripheral vision, sweeping under me, and I was staggering across grit like a mad cat, crashing sideways as Gaara hauled me back up.

"What the h—" I hesitated a fraction longer than necessary, on the verge of expressing my anger without care for his. But completely surrounded by his loyal sand as I was, I forced myself not to risk a maelstrom-death and finished, "—half-wit hopelessness was that for?"

"I do not want to kill you."

This was the six hundredth storm of confetti—completely unexpected, that is—he'd sprung on me tonight, and I scowled deeply at him out of bewildered shock before I remembered announcing earlier that he did. "Well, gee, that's a change," I muttered inadequately, and slumped back against a wall as his sand deposited me along the edge of the room, slinking away like a sea of scolded puppies. Gaara had no further response, and I wasn't willing to work up another effort at conversation, until I recalled that I'd been intent on asking about the Exams that had occurred when I was twelve.

"Tell—can you tell me about the plot against Konoha?" I said stiffly. "I sure don't remember anything happening."

"Nothing occurred. It failed."

"You weren't even here," I said reproachfully. "I would have seen you." Because I'd looked for him, still stuck unreasonably on that one childhood meeting, dammit. At least I was over it now.

"It halted outside the gates," Gaara said, voice cool. Perhaps cooler than usual, approaching icicle status rather than its normal freezing slush. "I do not wish to discuss it."

I considered pressing the issue, but subsided into a sullen silence instead, adding it to the list of mysteries I needed to solve. One: the laboratory in the Kazekage's Mansion, stocked with blood and inked and burned pictures of Gaara and me. Two: Saru Nami and her not-dead brother. Three: a failed plot against Konoha that Gaara was involved in. The list went on a light year longer than that, but damned if I could keep track of them all.

I dozed against damp wood, no longer afraid of sleeping in Gaara's presence. Mostly because he only seemed to be violent when I acted as a mosquito in his face, and there wasn't much I could do to rile him up while I was asleep, unless my snoring infuriated him. So far, he'd only murdered me in my dreams, not while I dreamed, so I deemed it relatively safe.

Waking when curtains of sunrise began drifting through the slatted wood, I found Gaara staring at me, which reminded me the real reason I hated sleeping in his presence. In return for the intense surveillance, which was what I mostly kept assuming it to be, seeing as he still didn't have working eyes, I offered him a scowl whose unseen intensity was interrupted by a yawn.

"Yes," said Gaara in the meantime.

I stopped with my mouth halfway open, trying to figure out what this one word could be a response to. Even if someone had told the kid that "yes" was a proper response to a yawn, he sure couldn't have known that's what I was doing at that moment. "Hey, kid," I said, "can you please stop launching back into conversations without introducing the topic?"

"Yes, I wish to rescue my…" He stumbled over the final word: "…family."

Oh, goody, I'd actually managed to change his mind. My capacity for change-of-heart speeches deserved lauding from Suna's highest cliffs. I sighed and gave a decisive nod that he couldn't see. That would entail breaking into the most securely-guarded building in the village, and I an untalented, unsneaky genin. I wanted to tell Gaara he had to stay here, extending my protection of Eiji to the rest of Konoha; I wanted the demon's wrath down on innocent heads less than I wanted a shuriken in my brain. But his source of power, so far as I had seen, was endless as the desert itself, and his ability to silence incensed shinobi would be the only thing that would get us inside.

"I have a condition," I said. He waited, and I added, "It's going to sound like an order."

He inclined his head very slightly; I took this as permission. "Don't kill anyone."

He didn't immediately kill me, which seemed a damn good start. I waited somewhat impatiently for him to ask why, ready to let loose an argument, but Gaara simply nodded again, leaving me speechless as a frog who'd swallowed a firework, the fight fizzling confusedly inside me.

-/-

I didn't plan. I was about as good at planning as a lemming was at flying. Grudgingly, I mentioned this to Gaara, feeling strangely obligated to warn him what he was undertaking. Some out of the blue urge to ask for help seemed to strike him, though at least it came hesitantly.

"Would your teammate—" He appeared reluctant to say names, but forced out, "—Eiji—assist us?"

"Eiji my teammate is now Eiji a chûnin, who probably wouldn't betray her Hokage like that." I paused. "Eiji my friend… might." A quick shake of my head sent hair whipping across my cheek. "But I won't risk her." I once again scowled at him, daring him to contradict me, despite the complete lack of effect facial expressions had on blind demons. He still didn't argue, and one way or the other, we ended up outside the Hokage's tower in a night that swept cool and crisp across our skin, devoid of a plan besides "don't kill anyone." I didn't know where the Hokage kept political prisoners locked up, so I had vague ideas of searching her office for information first; maybe if we made our infiltration quietly enough, we could escape and plan the actual rescue for another night. As if I'd actually plan for the next time either.

This was damn stupid. There had to be ANBU who couldn't get into this building, because ANBU guarded it. Gaara and his demon might have had a desert tsunami on their side, but we were still just genin and oh _hell_, I wasn't turning back now.

I was dressed in dark blue, the better for melding with the night; I pressed myself against the smooth wood of the building and begged all the desert gods that it would be enough. Flexing my fingers, I gathered lines of chakra to my extremities. At least Nami's uncharitable ejection had gained me something: I was now practically an expert at climbing. Scuttling up the wall, I slipped through a window and turned to lean back over the sill, watching Gaara stand in blind patience. Gods take it, I hadn't considered how to navigate him inside.

A thought and a twist of sand later, he had teleported up beside me. "How did you know where to go?" I hissed, covering a flinch.

"Your scent," he said calmly. I had half a second to be alarmed and revolted by this before he amended, "Your sand," and I realized the stuff saturated with years of my blood was, without my consent, jittering around in the masses under his control, leading him up to me.

"Great," I said sourly, and crept across the room toward the door. Hulking beasts that were shadowy furniture loomed from the walls; I ignored it, trying to do the same for the shallow quiver in the pit of my stomach that transformed every gloomy shape into our ANBU-borne death. Pressing my forehead to the door and pretending it was to help me concentrate, not to give me something solid to aid my calm, I slid a few grains of sand through the crack and into the unknown beyond. They couldn't tell me much—I couldn't bloody well _see_ with them, although that would've been nicer than ice cream in a drought—but I could generally decipher what they came in contact with. At least, I knew the difference between solid unyielding wall and yielding human flesh. Unless my grit encountered something like a stack of sponges on the other side of the door; then all bets were off. My powers of discernment were not that great.

The hallway—assuming it was a hallway—appeared to be entirely free of cleaning supplies and living creatures. Cautiously, I eased the door open, sickly aware of the nervous bulk of Gaara hovering like an anxious bear behind my shoulder. He sure as hell wasn't making me any calmer.

We both edged out of the room and were a few feet down the hall when light footsteps echoed around the corner like harbingers of hell. It couldn't have been ANBU—ANBU wouldn't have _had_ footsteps—but it was still danger. Still discovery, dammit. I chanced a look at Gaara, who stood with his head tilted quizzically to one side.

"Unconscious is okay," I said in a low, hasty voice, and the sand surged past me to prevent our untimely detection.

We dragged the victim—a clerk, perhaps, we sure didn't take the time to examine him in detail—back to the room that had been our point-of-entry, and then I hurried us off down the hall. I make a new dragonfly-quick decision to choose speed over silence; I knew Gaara could silence anyone who verged on spotting us, but we had to find what we were looking for before someone discovered a trail of hapless fainters. He only had to take out one more guard like this, alerted by a scuff of sand or a pulse of chakra, before we stumbled onto a door flanked by two statue-like shinobi.

Gaara's sand had already surged toward them; they had come to life at our approach, not fooled by our clumsy attempts at sneaking past ninja mountains better than us. My own sand flipped heedlessly backwards, away from me. Rotating, intending to snatch the recalcitrant golden fleas back to me, I caught a wing-quick glimpse of shadows leaping away. I grabbed Gaara and hauled him into the room whose guards he had just removed, muttering prayers that the place would yield some useful information, because the hidden guards had just run for backup and we wouldn't have long.

Luck struck us like lightning: it was _someone's _office, if not Tsunade's, and papers scattered the desk as the remnants of a summer storm. I lunged forward and began rifling through them, looking for some clue about Gaara's family with a muttered suggestion that he do the same for some of the drawers.

He could have taken it as an order and complicated the hell out of our already-difficult situation. He didn't, thank the gods, simply moved toward me and stood patiently in by the desk, not even bothering to point out to me that he couldn't very well do any damn thing to help without eyes. Somehow, someday, maybe I would remember that I had blinded him and stop expecting him to act as if I hadn't. That day was not, as the gods frown on me, the one where I was breaking into the Hokage's domain.

No footsteps yet approached; either our death came silently (entirely possible, since it came on little ninja feet), or reinforcements were slow to gather. I shuffled through useless drudgery about economics before I finally caught the word _Sunagakure_ in my desperate skimming.

"Hey, think I found—" I stopped so abruptly Gaara might have killed me, cutting off voice and breath with his sand. He twitched toward me, and I frowned deeper than a sea trench. "Hold a hat on, this stuff is talking about—" I flipped a page. "—It _is_ a recent plot. What the hell." Gaara flinched, his sand quivering on the ground, but I didn't actually think it was in response to my cussing. It seemed he didn't want me to keep reading, but I already had. "Tsunade believes you came to Konoha _intending_ to take me back to Suna. What—" I barely managed to keep the lid on another _—the hell_ and looked up at him, breathing deeply to contain anger that threatened a volcanic eruption.

Several things were hitting me at once, pelting me like a hailstorm. If they caught me, they could do to me whatever the hell they wanted; I no longer belonged to Konoha, and Suna wouldn't claim me, preferring to distance itself from any potential implication. Especially since I'd come here without permission. About as many people as longed for tornadoes would miss me.

And if we did escape, I could never come back. Gaara and I had jutsu too damn distinctive for our own good; our sand was everywhere—or at least his was, I didn't have enough to spare—a clear indication of who'd been messing with the important paperwork and knocking out guards. Tsunade probably wouldn't send shinobi to follow me back to Suna, but if I ever entered Konoha again, I'd be trapped like a firefly in a jar, with the same consequences I had previously considered.

I had returned to Konoha, the village I had rejected as home; I had come to accept it as a home I had left; and now, gods damn the desert, I was being forced to give it up again because I'd felt the need to preach morals to a possessed redhead I didn't even _like_.

Well, I'd better start liking him after I'd gone through all this for him. That was my last sour thought, before I said, "We're going to be caught, Gaara."

His sand roiled a raging meadow of gold and he said, "No."

"We're about three breaths from it." I folded my arms, then thought better of it and started rearranging the papers on the desk, trying to disguise what I'd been looking at. "We can get the hell—heck, sorry—out of here and never come back and maybe not be caught." I glanced up, but for once he wasn't staring at me as he waited for me to continue.

"This paper references where your teammates are being held," I said flatly, the only defense I made against the unreasonable state of this offer. "I know how to get there. We can nip down, fight them out, and _then_ leave here and never come back. We have about ten times more chance of being caught and all being stuck in a dank hole of a dungeon. You have five seconds to decide."

"Yes," he said.

"Well, that makes things easier," I said irritably, and dove for the window, tugging grains of his sand to lead him in my wake.

-/-

He did not know who she did this for. It couldn't have been for Temari and Kankuro—as far as he knew, she had never met them. It couldn't have been for either village, for she disobeyed both in her scheming.

It couldn't have been for him; she made it clear what she thought of him.

Her motives eluded him, and that made him—him _and_ the demon, who was used to being in control, not manipulated for unknown reasons—restless. Nervous.

Worse, he—he who had never owed allegiance to his siblings or his village or anyone but himself—didn't know who _he_ did this for, and that unnerved him to the core.


	26. Legions of the Blind

**A/N: **I'm afraid this chapter might seem a little rushed. I apologize, but it had to be thus, or I would have let myself be bogged down and we would've had another several-month hiatus on our hands. Because… yeah, if I worry too much, the 95% of me that is a perfectionist takes over. Sorry. |:

P.S. It turns out writing is an excellent way to procrastinate on all the packing I should be doing. That's why you have a chapter. But I now leave in a week and a half and still have not packed, so… now it's urgent. See you on the other side! xD

-/-

I hadn't counted on the fact that high-level shinobi, obviously a hell of a lot better versed in strategy than me, would have thought to surrounded our exits. I landed practically on top of a jônin who flipped me over his head and toward the ground with a spine-jarring landing to follow. Fireworks lit my vision while I fumbled for an elusive kunai and thought woozy orders at my chakra-inundated sand, and then—and I sure never thought I'd apply this phrase to a situation involving that demon—thank the desert-born gods: Gaara was in our midst, battling with his waves of gold.

Recovering my equilibrium not _quite_ as quickly as an inebriated cat, I stumbled back to my feet, commanding a thin wisp of sand that paled in comparison to Gaara's ochre wildfire. It met porcelain mask and hard armor—and sometimes, it met skin, worrying greedily where it found blood. Gaara was far more useful, ruthless. Or I thought so, until I crouched over the body of a woman he'd dragged down and realized she was stirring. He'd actually stuck to the _no killing_ rule, striving for unconsciousness rather than brutal death.

She'd be up again in a moment, rejoining the fight, and I sure had to prevent that. But I'd never killed before; Aruno-sensei had never allowed us near enough to a mission that would present cause for it. It seemed more inappropriate than vomiting on a shrine to kill now, when even Gaara wasn't doing so.

Staring at the way her emerald hair pooled into the verdant Konoha grass, I took a moment to wonder what it would be like to claim an ANBU as my first intentional kill. I was a shinobi; I had no illusions: I would murder eventually. And when would I ever again have an ANBU at my mercy, without Gaara to do the hard part for me?

Then I slammed unconsciousness over her instead, and went to help Gaara.

Even he couldn't face down a blend of ANBU and jônin and emerge without a scratch; and he was tiring like a snake in the cold, sand slowing as it rushed to block jutsu and return in kind simultaneously. We were lucky only in that Konoha was so trusting; the number of guards could have been far greater, the arrival of backup much speedier. I didn't have time for gratitude, or even my usual half-desperate promises to practice more later. Just sand that whipped like useless lightning, flashing steel following to scratch against armor when I had a moment to attack instead of just defend.

Sagging sideways like a weary sack of flour, I discovered a new presence beside me and almost put a kunai in Eiji's shoulder before she caught my wrist. Her face was blank except for the barest quirk of a grin, the slightest glint in her pale-ice eyes as she whispered, "I got this, hun," and pivoted away.

Surging to my feet, I clenched my blood-slick fingers around Gaara's arm, rough with the crumbling patches of his armor and hissed for him to run. He was too tired to flinch or fight, simply obeyed, sand bubbling in his wake to slow any who pursued.

Few did, distracted by Eiji, and guilt spun in my stomach like a dust devil seeking escape. Eiji was good, but she was no genius, she couldn't hold off a contingent of ANBU by herself. She didn't have to—she only had to distract them long enough for Gaara and I to flee. And she specialized in the use of her bokken, but she had a handful of jutsu, simple but concentrated, that she'd shown no one but me. No shinobi in that fight would recognize the spiraling black chakra-fueled smog as hers, and she might hide herself long enough for all of us to get the hell out of there.

Only Gaara and I weren't leaving. I dragged him towards the wall, heading for one of the smaller side gates I knew existed, as if we were planning to bolt, but the Hokage's office sure wasn't close enough to the exit for us to actually head out and come back in. We doubled back through the trees instead, circling around the mess while I searched for some sign of Eiji's capture or escape. I saw neither, just the lingering scraps of chakra smoke. I hoped to the sky and back that she hadn't ended up a sacrificial lamb for nothing. I'd grown up with that girl and for some reason she still loved me. I'd left Konoha—and thus, her, my best friend—behind with altogether too little remorse.

I didn't have time for it, but I spared a moment to wonder if they'd let me write letters to her in prison if she'd been caught. Or if they'd let me write her letters even if she hadn't—if they'd let my letters go anywhere but straight to the Hokage under suspicion of espionage. For some damn reason I couldn't pinpoint, we'd never started the pen pal thing in all those months I'd been away, and now I didn't know if we could.

And then I had to abandon the subject, because we were slipping down into the cells. Temari and Kankuro were not, the report had informed me, under high security; they had cooperated in pretty much every way despite not giving Tsunade the information she demanded, and she believed them to be not particularly enmeshed in the higher echelons of whatever the hell this plot was, that they followed orders as good shinobi did and bore Konoha no especial bad will.

Nonetheless, we faced a handful of guards. Not ANBU—maybe an amalgam of jônin and chûnin. With Gaara and I both tiring like cripples running a marathon, I stopped trying to figure out how to knock them out with a few grains of sand. I simply slammed the stuff into their eyes. My specialty. The Hokage would have to start a legion of blind ninja in my wake. Raiyo could lead the way, still with half his sight, just enough to see the way he was showing them. He'd probably do a better damn job than I was.

I shoved the bitter thoughts back down my throat, though they'd distracted me enough that my sand moved with alacrity as I ordered it to jimmy the locks and set Gaara's siblings free. His sister—Temari, it was easier to think of her like that; the idea of Gaara with an older sister was still strange as wings on a frog to me—tried to prop me up, but I shook her off, the only one who knew the secret paths out of Konoha that they had showed us as children, for use in case of emergencies.

Except I didn't take them down the damn secret paths, tied by some linger loyalty to a village I would probably never see again. I led them—still I had to lead them, and couldn't lean on the blonde who had hesitantly turned to help her brunet brother with their redheaded teammate—the long way, toward a real exit. Not the main gate, that was the other damn end of the village, but nothing hidden. Someone else silenced the guard. Then we were out, not quite running, limping like lame lopsided horses. We angled toward Ame and then back towards the desert, trying to both shake pursuit and return to the Land of Wind where the Konoha-nin had no jurisdiction as desperately quickly as possible.

-/-

It was damned difficult not to rest, but we couldn't, not with the potential of Konoha-nin so close on our heels. I knew there'd be a thousand political demons to pay now, but I couldn't muster the energy to wrestle with them; I was too gods-driven busy running.

We allowed ourselves a pause after crossing the border out of the Land of Fire. I didn't so much forage as Temari and Kankuro brought me handfuls of plants and I told them which ones probably wouldn't poison us all. That responsibility would be off me once we were in the desert, where I wasn't used to living, and I craved that like chocolate on the worst day; at this point, I was too bone-deep weary to be certain I _wasn't_ going to poison us.

We caught the edge of a cloudburst as we veered too close to Amegakure, so we were cold and wet as well as tired and sore. Gaara moved like a slug over broken glass, his gourd dripping candlewax-gobs of sand, and more than one stumble nearly brought him and whichever sibling was supporting him at the time to their knees. Temari and Kankuro both seemed on the verge of jumping like terrified crickets from him each time this happened, as if he would blame them for his fall. Temari was better at holding her ground.

And then we were in the desert, and I thanked every god I could think of, then invented some more for good measure.

We weren't safe, but we were saf_er_. I collapsed into the sand like I intended to be buried there. Temari and Kankuro had run with us but they hadn't fought with us beforehand; they were marginally better-rested and offered to take the watches. Which was a damn good thing, because I was asleep before I could do something about keeping the hellish eye of the sun off me while I napped.

Someone else took care of it, because I wasn't red as a shriveled strawberry when I woke up as night sank over us. Gaara hadn't slept, of course, but he was as close to a doze as I'd ever seen him. Temari handed me something that had probably once been some piece of a cactus; if my mind hadn't been otherwise occupied, I would have asked for some details. Part of my new determination to learn about living in the desert. So I could be just as damn good at it as I was in the forest.

We uprooted and moved a few miles, still too tired to go far, but heading deeper into the dunes. As we sat, then, around a sparkling fire, I said loudly, "I have questions."

"We can't answer them," said Kankuro dully. "We're not allowed."

I cast him a steely glare, then said, "No, I'll be saving those questions for Baki himself." He probably wouldn't answer them either, but I didn't think Temari and Kankuro had enough information to answer me to my satisfaction. "I want to know about the Chûnin Exams plot against Konoha. Three years ago."

Kankuro looked at Temari, who gave him a 'what the hell' sort of expression. "We'd still be sitting in a cell if not for her."

"Yeah, but we'd be in a lot less trouble." Kankuro shrugged. "It was a plot to overrun Konoha. The Kazekage made a deal with some weird snake ninja called Orochimaru. It was supposed to end with Konoha destroyed, the Hokage dead, I don't know what else."

I seriously considered taking up pacing. The Third Hokage hadn't died three years ago; he'd abdicated to Tsunade a year later, under circumstances I sure wasn't privy to. I'd seen him around the village sometimes, though looking pretty darned weary around the eyes for a guy who was supposed to be in retirement. "But nothing _happened_. It was normal as grass under a tree. I was _watching_ those Exams." Jealously.

"No, we never made it into Konoha. I dunno what Orochimaru did without the Sunagakure half of his army." Kankuro shrugged again. "Maybe he still tried something, but it was taken care of quietly."

"Gaara stopped us outside the gates." Temari spoke up finally, and she sounded troubled, though she crossed her arms and tried her hardest to hide it. "Gaara refused to go through with it."

Kankuro glanced at his brother, nervous as a mouse before an owl, then nodded when Gaara didn't appear to react. Not that a reaction would be visible behind those impassive bandages. "And Gaara was the key to it all. We had to pull out. He nearly killed Baki fighting orders."

"Baki nearly killed him for disobeying," said Temari quietly, then snorted. "Like he could've."

I stared at Gaara, hoping for some contribution, but he didn't seem to be sitting in the same circle as the rest of us. "_Why?_" I demanded. I wanted Gaara to answer, but found it as unlikely as a turtle in a tree that he would.

"He never did say," responded Kankuro. "If you find out, let us know, would you?" He lay back in the sand and stretched out, linking his hands under his head. "In the meantime, I'd like to know how you convinced Gaara to get us out of there. Since you obviously had no authorization, or you would've had a plan and backup."

"How do you know he didn't convince _me_?"

He scoffed. "Right. The brother who's never considered us family decided to make a three-day journey and fight off half the Hokage's guards, and he convinced the crabby girl who doesn't even like him to follow him and do the job. Yeah, I believe it."

"Hell," I said, watching Gaara closely. He didn't react to the word, and I squashed a hint of what felt like worry at just how out of it he actually was. "I dunno. I guess maybe we're friends."

He twitched at that, just the tiniest flicker of his sand, but it wasn't the same pitiable reaction that came when I swore at him. I reserved a satisfied smirk and added, "But only because otherwise I nearly got myself and my best friend killed for nothing. And if you tell Baki I said it, I'll convince Gaara to kill you next."

Kankuro was too busy gaping at me to respond. But Temari was watching me with some emotion I couldn't read hidden behind her haughty gaze.

-/-

We moved on every few hours, lacking the strength necessary for a full day of traveling, but quickly regaining it. After a day or so, I convinced Temari and Kankuro that they could go off foraging at the same time; Gaara and I were recovered enough to take care of ourselves while they sought food and water. The kid hadn't spoken at all since we'd left Konoha, and I was determined he should start now.

I didn't lead with the easy questions.

"Hey, Red," I said, just to get his attention, and then leapt straight into, "Why didn't you betray Konoha?"

His blind bandaged eyes stared off into the distant desert, hiding enough power to fight a virtual army. I had seen it. I tempted it anyway. "Hey. Come on. Answer me. _Please_."

Without turning his face to me, as if it was a habit he no longer needed, he raised one pale hand into the air. I was startled to see that it was shaking like a water glass in an earthquake; several whorls of sand gathered in his cupped fingers, but hesitantly. I suspected for a moment that they were to drill my eyes out, revenge for all he'd suffered from me, but instead, they formed a twister the size of a lily dusting across his palm.

"Konoha," he said. "You said Konoha."

And then he dropped it, leaving me to marvel that he'd disobeyed his village for memory of a girl, and I'd never seen him in ten years because he'd refused to destroy my new home where I could watch.

Damn.


	27. Worth the Dark

**A/N: **Here I am, on the road, driving a thousand miles to my new home! And in the meantime, plenty of time for writing on a sixteen-hour road trip. C:

-/-

We took our time returning to Suna, which suited me fine. I mean, we didn't _linger_—we still had to return, report, and give the Council time to prepare for the repercussions of those political demons—but we didn't race like a thousand vultures were on our heels. I made Temari start teaching me to survive in the desert, and I found myself amused as a monkey out of reach of a tiger that I was calmer around Gaara than his very own siblings. _Calmer_ meaning I didn't flinch every time he turned his head in my direction, not that I was a docile little mouse in his presence.

He cornered me one day like I'd already cornered him and asked if I'd meant what I said about us being friends (in not so many words, since Gaara's about as wordy as a deaf-mute foreigner in solitary confinement). I narrowed my eyes and stared grumpily past him, because I really wanted to say no and deny everything. Instead, I compromised.

"I said it to get a rise out of you, Red." His mostly-hidden face remained impassive, but the sand around his feet offered the tiniest shudder. I sighed and added grudgingly, "What the he—ck. Yeah, okay. Don't see why else you'd fight to save my life when you should happier than a toad in the mud to get rid of me."

"You… lead me."

I cast him a look of my most scathing skepticism and said, "But nowhere good." I made to stalk off, but he didn't seem to think the discussion was over.

"I do not have many friends." Actually, I think I misheard him; he probably said "any."

"Since I left the last one in a host of ANBU taking the fall for me and you," I said irritably, "neither do I. And if you're any indication of my tastes, it's easy to say why."

Then I did leave, in case he hadn't worked out the "friends don't kill each other" rule yet.

-/-

When Suna's sentinels could be seen, impassively watching us draw near, I started to get nervous. My sand fluttered an anxious circle around my shoulders until I forced it back into its pouch, and fully half my brain turned to hastily inventing improbably escape plans. Just in case Baki had learned to kill with his disapproving one-eyed glare while I was gone. My estimates of the depths of his imminent rage made this pretty damn likely.

He actually came out of the village to meet us, followed by a contingent of avenging shinobi angels. Or close enough to it that I would have bolted back to Konoha had I not just eliminated the last of the trust that place had in me. Baki offered Temari and Kankuro a cool nod, acknowledging that this was clearly not their fault and ordering them home to report.

Next he looked at Gaara and ordered the same.

I swore quietly under my breath, ready for the retaliation from the redhead. My sand flung itself upward, a paltry defense against the overspill of furious disobedience I was sure to catch.

Instead, Gaara was still for a moment, time holding its breath, and then he turned to follow his siblings.

The speed with which my jaw hit the ground broke some records; I was too busy being startled as a cat in a water balloon fight to fully register the half-surprised, yet satisfied smile that flitted through Baki's sole visible eye. When I'd managed to close my mouth (without even letting a stream of swear words out of it), I started to go after all of them. Baki snagged my wrist and pulled me up short.

"Where di you acquire the ability for two long-term shadow clones and a transformation?" he demanded—did that man ever just ask nicely for _anything?_—and I failed to prevent a reckless grin of superiority on Soriko's behalf. He hadn't even caught the mastermind behind our escape.

"When did they dissolve?" I asked instead of answering his question.

Baki offered me a look of deepest loathing, which I accepted with delight. He also didn't answer _my_ question, but began dragging me off in a different direction than the Kazekage's three children had gone.

"Hey, I want to know what's going on." He ignored me. "Come on, dammit, if you're screwing with me and Gaara, I want to know _why_."

I continued to be towed along like a recalcitrant child. As fed up with this treatment as a lizard on a leash, I twisted my wrist out of his grip and dropped into a spinning sweep. Baki avoided my kick easily, being a jônin to my lowly, untalented genin—and I was struck suddenly by how damn lucky I was to be alive after facing Konoha's elite. Lucky Konoha rarely fought to kill if they could avoid it. Lucky to have Gaara and his nearly limitless sandy strength on my side. Of course, I was only in that situation because of him, so maybe less lucky on that front.

When I'd finished contemplating this, I noticed that three kunai pinned my long vest to the ground, and Baki advanced on me like an oncoming mountain. Scowling, I ripped my clothing free (with as much care as I could manage, I sure couldn't afford to replace it if I shredded it) and stood up to face him. Even if that might signal the end of my luck.

"Am I a citizen of Sunagakure?"

My snapped question brought him up short. "Does Suna claim me?" I asked furiously, clenching my fist around the bloodstained Konoha _hitai-ate_ on my belt. "Because I've given up a whole darn—_damn_—lot, and I'm feeling pretty damn devoid of rights. And I don't think Konoha's ever going to take me back now," I added, uncurling my fingers with difficulty.

Baki regarded me in a manner only half as intimidating on Gaara on his best day. "No," he said at last. "You are not a citizen of Suna."

I reached up and unknotted the _hitai-ate_ across my forehead, holding it out to him so it swayed in the faint stirring of a dry breeze. "Is this a lie, then?" I demanded. "Or am I the first ever shinobi to be a citizen of nowhere?"

He took it from me before I could stop him, though I damn well should have been expecting it. "You are a tool," he said. "You do not need to a be a shinobi to be useful."

Then he raised his hand in a signal, and more ninja emerged from the stone around us. My sand whipped pathetically sideways, scraping flesh away, but without Gaara's help I was useless against the wave of greater skill. It took about the space of a star's inhalation before they knocked me out.

-/-

When I woke up, I was being lugged through a building I didn't recognize, past doors I did: they matched the kunai-cold door that hid the strange lab in the Kazekage's mansion. I spent a few wild moments envisioning mad-scientist nightmares, being the victim of insane chakra experiments. Well, I thought sourly as I stopped letting my imagination go crazy and returned to just being mad as hell, maybe they'd screw up and I'd mutate into a chakra-wielding monster to rival Gaara himself.

The burly shinobi who carried me dropped me—on my feet, at least—and shoved me forward into a small dark room. I pivoted, opening my mouth to offer my entourage some choice opinions, but he was already slamming the door in my face.

Since my words were of the greatest import, I had sand in the lock and the door finagled open seconds later, curses on the tip of my tongue.

Baki stepped out from the shadows behind the burly porter and slapped a chakra seal on my chest. The door thundered shut again, and my slew of swear words bounced harmlessly off the dark.

I thought it wouldn't matter. They damn well _needed_ me: _I _led Gaara around, showed him how to walk, changed the bloody bandages when the demon reopened its eyes inside Gaara's own. No one else was going to do that, so they would have to let me out soon, even if only to do the job I'd been forced to do.

But apparently Gaara was doing better. I seemed to have done too damn good a job teaching him how to guide himself with his own writhing sand. Because they didn't come from me.

A swill that looked like wet sand mixed with horse crap came through an otherwise-locked cat-flap in my cell door. It tasted better than it looked, but it was hardly five-star cuisine. Or four-star. Or half a star. I spent the first measure of days fidgeting futilely with the chakra seal, kicking the door, and shouting at things.

And then the darkness started to take its toll.

Even in my closet in Konoha, with my mad mother guarding the door, I'd had the promise of escape. Even in winter, which I loathed with all my bitter fibers, I'd had sun. But here I was punished, and I knew it. I was cold, damp, longing for light like a withering plant. They robbed me of every damn thing I'd gained when I returned to the desert.

I started to wonder if this is how Gaara felt, wandering blind, lost in chill shadow imposed by somebody else.

By the time my cell door finally opened again, I was all ready with an "About damn _time_." But my voice was hoarser than a chain-smoking bullfrog, and I was too busy being blinded anew by the grey light filtering in. All I managed was a tired, irritated squeak, followed by a cough.

As soon as I rubbed away the stinging water in my eyes, I prepared some new snark and raised my gaze. I lost it when I looked up and saw, of all people, Saru Nami in the doorway.

"I'm sorry I threw you off a cliff, Izari," she said dryly, with the least amount of apology possible in her tone. "Now stand up, we have to get out of here."

I would have gladly complied, if I hadn't been too busy gaping like a dead fish. She waited a moment to see if I would get my butt into motion, then her expression softened just slightly.

"Kanri came to see me." A wild, liquid joy lit her eyes as she said it. It was almost painful to look at. "He said you talked him into it."

I didn't remember inspiring a change-of-heart in him. I did remember throwing sharp objects at his head. Maybe that's just what it takes with some people. I sure as hell wasn't going to question it, not when the end result was Nami saying, "I owe you," and being my ticket out of this frigid hell.

I scrambled to my feet as Kanri appeared behind her, arm going almost unconsciously around her shoulder. Like he would never not protect his little sister again. The cynical half of me—well, the cynical seven-eighths of me—snorted that she, shinobi, didn't need protection. The other piece offered a shaky jealousy at the family reunited. Partially reunited. As far as I knew, Nami still had two other dead brothers and a father in a similar state.

"Delighted to have been of service to you crazy kids," I announced, pretending I wasn't wobbling like a one-legged rat on a balance beam. A brief silence seized me, and then I added softer, "Thanks."

Nami gave me a sharp nod and pivoted, her brother's hand falling away as they split across the hallway. I had no weapons left but my body. Nonetheless, I moved up behind Nami. She reached back, placed two fingers against my sternum, and muttered a release like a prayer. The chakra seal peeled off as easily as wet leaves and the sand clinging to my clothing leapt into the air buzzing with chakra.

I was concentrating so hard on the way in front of us that my sandy entourage lunged forward at the first head to appear around a corner. Soriko squeaked and retreated. She reappeared a few seconds later as I reined in my overeager chakra, bearing a few new scratches faint as ghosts.

"Soriko's here, too?" I demanded, probably too loud for caution.

"Yes?" she guessed, while Nami snorted and said, "How else did you think we'd spring you? Without an army?"

"Someday you'll have to explain to me while you all suddenly decided I was worth betraying your village for." I flung out the words carelessly, but they were true to the roots: I'd never done anything to endear me to anyone. They shouldn't be here. They were better people than me. Not that that was hard.

"I'll explain now?" Soriko suggested, as if we weren't standing in a hostile hallway, but rather gathered at a private café for a cheery chat. "You brought me some fun. I want to do it again?"

"Don't they give you plenty to do in the Shinobi Corps?"

"Yes?" she said thoughtfully. "But it's quite boring and predictable. Politics," she added firmly, and with the utmost disgust.

"We don't have time to stand around visiting," Nami finally cut in, since we weren't taking the hint from her pointed stares.

"It's okay?" Soriko offered gaily. "They're all chasing my—older brother? On the other side of the compound."

Three shuriken spun past my head, clipping my hair and thudding into the walls. "Whoops!" said Soriko bright as summer stars. "Missed one?"

She ducked a punch thrown by the ninja suddenly behind her and two shadow clones appeared to defend her. I noticed they weren't as perfect as usual: skin too pale, hair too red, just a shade too tall. Maintaining pristine clones of Gaara and me for a week or two and then fighting while simultaneously leading more ninja on a merry chase elsewhere in the building must have been like reining in a herd of elephants being attacked by jaguars while crocodiles mauled her ankles. Yet she _still_ had chakra for clones, even if they weren't on par with her usual standards. Damn that chick had power, and the finesse to wield it like a surgeon's knife.

I ran out of time to fawn over Soriko's abilities when I remembered those shuriken had come from behind me. I pivoted, ducking, and parried the slash of a kunai with a flare of sand. With my downward motion, I punched his knee in, reversed to elbow him in the chest, and rifled through his shuriken holster when he fell.

I turned to find no one left to use them on; we'd only faced the two. Kanri stalked forward, knelt by my dropped opponent, and slit his throat before I could think to protest.

"Hey," I said belatedly, but with enough vehemence to make up for it. "Can we not kill our own team?" I couldn't shake the last vestiges of loyalty to Suna. In my brain, my vengeance was mostly aimed toward Baki, and maybe that damn Kazekage. They'd done this to me. Killing their lackeys seemed damn unfair.

"My team," said Kanri, rather dangerously, does not consist of ninja who killed my little brothers, experimented on me, and kept me from my younger sister for three years. Or anyone who helps them."

I held further objection, recalling that he was equally capable of slitting my throat, too. At least the guy wasn't going to stand back up and stab us from behind.

-/-

Gaara didn't recognize the sensation in his chest, but the demon taunted him with it. Called it guilt. Ripped at the blackness over his vision until he cried out and blood painted his cheeks in the dark. Beneath the—_guilt_, which he found he did not want to acknowledge—another feeling rose, while he waited for her to return and replace his bandages. But no gritty scent of blood-sand and exasperation visited him, not even after the liquid seeped through his armor and crusted on his skin.

At last, hesitantly, he lifted his hands and unknotted the ends she had so carelessly tangled. The cloth held, glued to his face by the dried blood, but he tore it free, and stood, holding the soiled bandages. He didn't know what to do with them, or with what he could replace them. It amazed him—hurt him—to discover how dependent he had become on her aid, and the guilt for what he had not yet done vanished beneath a swell of anger. The demon mocked him.

But he didn't know whether he aimed the rage at_ her_, for demanding his reliance, or at his father, his sensei, those who had given him hope and now could only hurt _her_ to fulfill it—or take it away.

He didn't know which he would hate more. The demon laughed again. Chanted _guilt guilt guilt _in the dark.


	28. For Loyalty

**A/N: **I missed writing fight scenes. 8D I think I'm out of practice.

The end's coming up pretty quickly now! Only two chapters after this (or three, if things don't resolve as planned, which is always a possibility—but no more than three).

-/-

"So," I began instead, with what I discovered to my scorching horror was an air of forced casualness melded with a humiliating drop of hope. "I'm not going to turn a corner and discover you brought Gaara with you, too, am I?"

I was incinerated by no less than two expressions of incredulous disgust, plus one of incredulous amusement from Soriko. Kanri strode off without deigning to respond, followed by Nami, who stalked him like a grumpy cat. Soriko chose to amble after. I fell in step with her, trying to surreptitiously stretch muscles stiff as a petrified forest.

"Gaara's not allowed out right now," Soriko let drop as if she were pondering a fly crawling up a window. "He's detained?"

"What? Where?"

She shrugged. "I dunno? Is that important?"

It sure as hell was, but considering she'd upheld enough details of Gaara's and my lives to pretend to be us for a couple weeks, I grudgingly forgave her this lack of information and fumed to myself like an awakening volcano with fewer side effects.

"Hey, Kanri—"

Before I could follow through on the thought—before I could use him and Nami to start explaining what the hell was Gaara's deal—I noticed that we were walking through two inches of water. I squelched on for a few unpleasant steps before realizing that the water roiled with chakra like overfertilized seaweed.

"Hey, _Kanri,_" I said with a feather's more urgency, and Nami gave me a sour look.

"Don't distract him, Izari."

"Distract him from _wha_—"

A kunoichi dropped from the ceiling, swathed in black and gold, into the space between Nami and I. Name swung out, but the plummeting shinobi grabbed my shoulders and used them as a base to flip over my head, lithely avoiding the blow. I stumbled backwards, half tripping over myself and the kunoichi. She landed with a muted splash. Sand whipped around, followed by me.

I halted my shuriken mid-swing. The water burbled and curled like it was giving birth to alien snakes. I scrambled away, but the disturbance didn't chase me. It lapped at the hostile kunoichi's ankles as she stepped into a punch towards my face, then collapsed mid-motion.

"You pulled that off well," Nami remarked. It took me a bewildered moment to realize she wasn't talking to me.

"It could be better," said Kanri. "I'll never have it like you did."

Nami shrugged. "But you can still wipe the floor with me at taijutsu, and I'm supposed to have learned that."

Kanri walked on, apparently forgetting to finish off the kunoichi while he was diverted by the conversation. "That's not something that transferred. You just need to practice."

"I hate practicing."

"I guess not everything changed."

He delivered the words lightly, but both of them spoke in uncertainly careful voices, like the topic might burn their lips if they were to callous about it. For a minute, I had as much clue as a deaf cow as to what they were saying. Then I thought of how I'd remembered Nami being neat and good at puzzles and traps, and Kari as the medic. _That's not something that transferred. _So something else _had_ transferred, and if the water jutsu at our feet had once been Nami's, their conversation started to make a scary amount of sense.

"Okay," I said. "I _really_ want to know what's going on. Like if it were a choice between eating pig's brains and continuing to be clueless right now, I would eat me some tasty pork head innards. And then puke my guts out. Just to know what's going on."

Nami ignored my eloquently-worded insistence and said shortly, "When we're out." I looked hopefully at Soriko instead. She just shrugged and said, "I don't know anything, do I?" like she couldn't fathom why she would've bothered to find out.

I ground my teeth in thwarted frustration and kicked my way noisily through the chakra water, forgetting anything resembling stealth.

-/-

I figured Kanri was using the water jutsu to sense approaching hostiles—as long as they didn't come from above—and incapacitate them before they engaged us in hand-to-hand. But he didn't have enough chakra to save us from an entire compound, even with Nami feeding him hers. The water evaporated pretty soon after, about when I was starting to wonder why the hell I couldn't just pick one of these metal doors and see if there was anything interesting inside.

Soriko, too, was showing the strain. I didn't know what all she had going elsewhere, but she was paler than an albino goat in a cloudbank, and occasionally grabbed my arm for support. I was the only one running on a full well of chakra, but my oh-so-broad range of talents was about as useful as a frog in a frying pan.

So of course it was a damn good time for an ambush.

I felt my arms yanked behind me and kicked backwards, snapping a knee like a cinnamon stick. Pulling free, I drove an elbow into the temple of a black-haired kunoichi who harried Soriko with a series of needle-sharp wind jutsu. A calculated pivot blended seamlessly into a kick to the head of the man whose knee I'd broken; I brought a ribbon of sand with me, though it fluttered to the ground as soon as I ordered it toward the next attacker's face.

Snarling, I ripped a shuriken across a familiar scar, since I didn't have time to argue with the damn stuff.

Dropping to the floor, I smeared my hand across the grit and rolled to the side to avoid a sword blade slamming toward my back. Soriko struggled with two kunoichi, trying to defend herself with a humpbacked clone who threw kicks like a quadriplegic cricket. Kanri and Nami fought back-to-back, motions just out of sync, like they'd once been in tandem but could no longer remember quite how. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nami block a punch and then step into a kick she could have easily avoided. The blow elicited a short cry of pain that drove Kanri's sharp and silken movements all the harder.

A quick glance over showed Soriko unconscious. I snapped out a punch fanged with a shuriken; too slow on the return, it was dragged from my fist, rending the tender skin between my fingers. Sand whizzed back and forth, my attention split all directions, scoring lines of blood and distracting both my enemies and me with its gold hiss.

I dodged another succession of sweeps from the sword and twisted backwards into a fire jutsu that seared like the tongues of hell. I swore vivaciously, arcing as much sand as I could blindly through the flames. They extinguished themselves quickly, leaving me scorched but not permanently, for reasons I couldn't fathom. Unless they had just proved that this was a _capture-don't-kill_ game.

A minute later, I was captured. The brunet shinobi with the blade was too damn fast, driving me backwards until I tripped over an unconscious victim of I assumed Kanri's deadly taijutsu. A stringy blonde had ropes around my wrists in seconds, while I cursed up a tornado and craned my neck to look for help from the Saru siblings. Kanri was out cold, bleeding from the forehead, and Nami struggled against a bruise that decorated her entire left side and bindings similar to the ones I was currently experiencing.

My sand made a valiant attempt to fight off the blonde for me, flurrying in her face, but some foreign chakra moved in my veins. I grew sluggish as a camel in surgery, and finally blacked out.

-/-

Nobody I saw would respond to my shouting the next time I was conscious. A mélange of the dirtiest curses I know and enraged demands for explanations issued from me every time someone walked past my cell, but they were as effective as they had been since I'd left Konoha.

Until they took me to see the Kazekage.

I actually shut up right away, when Baki—equally impervious to my haranguing—led me into that room and shoved me to my knees. I knelt there, quiet as the hours before a storm, and surveyed the man who had caused me so damn much trouble, and whose village still, barely, commanded my faith.

He surveyed me in sharp silence, harsh eyes beneath his ceremonial hat. I wondered if Gaara's eyes had resembled these, before our match. I had forgotten what Gaara's eyes looked like, besides mangled bloodstained wounds and never-white bandages.

Finally, he said, "Izari Sunako."

Barely, I restrained myself. Not out of respect for the man himself, but for Sunagakure, which he represented. I settled for a simple "That's me," with the scantest amount of sass.

"We require your cooperation."

Through the most supreme effort of will I have ever put forth, I stayed silent, and waited for his elaboration. Maybe he would finally, _finally_ explain to me _what the hell was going on_.

"Under your supervision, Gaara has… settled." It unnerved me, the way he sat without moving, eyes trained on me. That redhead definitely got his stare from his father. "He follows orders where he was previously… unpredictable."

"Not usually," I muttered, but not loud enough to interrupt.

"…He does things because you wish it. In short, Gaara is in love with you."

I couldn't help it. I really, honest to the stars, all the desert as my witness, could not stop myself. I burst into cacophonous laughter mirth bouncing through the audience chamber like some drunken tropical bird. Around it, I choked out something like, "No. No _way_. You can't seriously—_damn_. But no. Gaara's in love with himself or whatever, remember?"

The Kazekage eyed me coolly until Baki prodded me in the back and I tried to stop laughing at the most powerful man in Suna. "You do not understand Gaara."

"No," I said, about to not only laugh at the Kazekage, but contradict him, "_you_ don't understand Gaara." I climbed to my feet, ignoring Baki's disapproval behind me. "He may be your son, but I'm the one who's been living with him for the past—" I'd lost track of how long it'd been.

"That kid's way more human than anyone gives him credit for, but he is not capable of being in love with another human being. When he's fully grasped the concepts of 'family' and 'friends,' then _maybe_ romance. But I think that's about as likely as every building in Suna sprouting wings and flying off to become neighbors to Amegakure."

"No one needs to understand love in order to experience it."

I snorted. The Kazekage regarded me with irritation, clearly debating the merits of continuing to argue with me. He opted not to, a smarter man than I'd already given him credit for.

"Regardless of the reasons, your presence has begun to stabilize Gaara—"

"—and Suna needs its tools under control." I folded my arms, having now laughed at, contradicted, _and_ interrupted the Kazekage. I was probably on Baki's 'torture horribly first' death list.

The Kazekage didn't gainsay me, simply said again, "We require your cooperation. Obedience from you as well as he. Name your price."

I looked down at my belt, where my Konoha _hitai-ate_ no longer hung, taken while I was incarcerated. I could have, at long last, the explanation for all that had happened. I'd recently been willing to eat pig brains for it, and now I could have it for the simple bargain of continuing to do just what I'd been doing for the past several months. It would be easy.

I gave it up in a heartbeat for loyalty.

"I want to be a shinobi of Sungakure." I clenched my fist, watching sand gather around it like a planet forming. "I want to wear a _hitai-ate_ with Suna's mark and have it be real." Raising my gaze, I met his again, and thought it was colder than Gaara's. "I want all the payment, privileges, and respect that comes with _being a shinobi._ No more being locked up without explanation. No more being kept in the dark." I meant that metaphorically, but I suspect he chose to interpret it as 'no more being imprisoned in a room with no lights on.' I'd settle.

I paused for the space of an exhalation, waiting for the slight inclination of his head, then went on. "In return, I'm still loyal to Suna. I will complete the mission I'm given. I will _be_ shinobi."

The Kazekage nodded, evidently satisfied. I hid the beginnings of a grin, and added, "And I want Soriko, Nami, and Kanri released."

He looked seconds from refusing, but said, "Very well," and allowed Baki to drag me out.


	29. Broken Birds

**A/N: **So this is definitely the second-to-last chapter. I finished the last one at about two o'clock this morning and it was actually really tragic, because holy snap, guys, I _love_ this story. It's so much fun to write. xD But in the end, we all must move on, so enjoy!

-/-

I stood up in front of Suna's people and they gave me a _hitai-ate_ once again. I knotted the sunset-red cloth at the back of my head and grinned into the crowd, making special note when I spotted the woman who'd thrown her damn flowerpots at me. It wasn't like every citizen of the village showed up to watch some genin officially become a genin again—and then chûnin, even though I wasn't great, because real genin were supposed to have teams and sensei, etc., and my situation sure as hell fell under special circumstances. But it was a special additional ceremony to the Academy graduation, so all those pleased-as-puppies parents beamed up at me, too. I beamed back like the desert sun itself was shining through my skin. That's what it felt like, with Suna's blaze lighting my ascent back into the ranks of the Shinobi Corps. For _real. _

And for a while, I was pretty damn happy. I thought I had what I wanted again: Suna, its bright dry heat and its loyalty in exchange for my own. I was plagued by a biting feeling that I'd lost something in Konoha, but I appeased it by writing Eiji. I was half sure she'd never see them, since communication from me in Konoha was about as welcome as a snowstorm on a stakeout, but I convinced myself they made a difference.

Gaara and I sauntered around the village like our fathers owned the place. Well, I sauntered, and his father owned the place. It was damn strange, but we talked. Or I talked a lot, and he sometimes tried to contribute, in his voice halting as dead leaves. We visited Soriko; Kanri's house had vacated quick as mayflies dying after his release, and Nami's cliff house was still too damn contrary to warrant a day trip.

The Kazekage even sent Gaara and I on missions together, often unsupervised. I shouldn't have enjoyed that—I still hated the feel of his blood-encrusted skin, feared the way his sand writhed restlessly around him when I slipped up and swore a command at him. But missions were part of being in the Shinobi Corps, and I relished them.

Sunagakure was finally earning my loyalty, seconds before losing it like a passing breath, and I was too damn proud to see the cage.

Except when I passed that kunai-steel door, determined not to look at it, and still hungry as a lion to know what was inside.

-/-

We were trudging back from a mission, tired as turtles who'd run a marathon and about as inclined to talk, when I noticed we were slogging through an inch of water. No rain had touched Suna's dusty floors, so unless the cistern was leaking, this wasn't natural.

I prepared to leap free while Gaara gathered his sluggish wet sand to follow, but we were caught too quickly. The genjutsu was weak and wobbly, struggling against the sun that strove to evaporate its chakra-fueled watery base. I mustered a release, foreseeing no challenge, then paused. The wavering sea promised none of the pain or immobilization the damn illusion should have been presenting. I didn't have the foggiest clue what it normally looked like to its unfortunate victims, but something else seemed to be trying to break the unsteady imagery.

At last, Kanri stepped into view, hazing like a steamed mirror. My jaw proclaimed my shock in the usual manner. He said something indistinct, frowned like a dying toad, and gestured smoothly. His image didn't clear, but his voice did. "We promised," he said, then vanished with the remnants of his jutsu.

Gaara stood frozen, and I wondered how genjutsu worked on the blind. Could he see them, even though he couldn't see anything else? Did it simulate vision for him, inside his head instead of through his eyes? He mustered a hesitant, "What—?" but apparently couldn't find any more words than that. Finally, he settled on, "What… did that mean?"

I leaned my back against the nearest stone wall, folded my arms, and considered him. The kid'd grown more assured in his steps since I'd guided him from Konoha, but there was still something vulnerable as a broken bird in his eyes—in the ways he couldn't use them. We'd stopped having staring contests I couldn't wind, both of us getting used to not turning our heads to meet each other's gazes. I stared now knowing he wouldn't see.

And threw one last chance for a bone to a blind puppy.

"Gaara," I said, "what can you tell me about what in the gods' halls is going on in that lab in the mansion?"

His brow furrowed, creasing the bandages I'd carefully failed to knot properly, and waited until the stars tore themselves apart. Then, with all the effort it takes a mountain to crumble away the ages, he said, "I… can't."

"Then it means I'm climbing a cliff by myself," I said.

-/-

He didn't know what that meant, or I think somehow he probably would have done his damnedest to stop me. Can't say what gave me that idea, but maybe it was the mingling of anxious regret and guilty I'd seen when I'd mentioned the lab—and guilty regret was something I'd expect Gaara to express right after Suna installed a water park adjacent to the Kazekage's mansion.

I directed him to a task I knew he could do alone, told him I was going to visit an old friends, and left to tempt fate.

Neither Nami nor her recently-recovered brother had thought to install an elevator for my convenience in the meantime. I climbed with more ease than I had the last time, but I spent the whole blasted ascent inventing new and exciting curses, and I still left stars of blood on the door where I knocked.

Nami opened it before a mosquito could take a breath, motioning me to perfect silence. Kanri's return had not brightened the place; we still traveled through shadowy hallways to one candlelit room. Kanri waited inside, somber as a mother waiting for her child to die. "I feel like I'm entering the site of a blood sacrifice," I muttered. "Can we turn on a light?"

"No. Mother's sleeping."

"Is she ever not?"

Nami gave me a look that could sour chocolate, one that clearly said I better shut up if I wanted answers. I did, desperately, despite all my oaths and fealty to my village. I still couldn't let this enigma go. So I closed my mouth.

Nami waited a moment more, then nodded slightly. "I told you I would explain once we finished rescuing you, Izari."

"Yeah, and that was ages ago, what took so long?" I asked, unable to help myself.

"We needed to make sure we could not be found," said Kanri softly. "We've been sinking chakra into the walls of this room for weeks. No one can hear us in here."

"So we don't have to worry about waking up your mom? Then can we please have more light?"

That expression of Nami's was going to curdle milk if she kept practicing like that. "The chakra blocks sound, not light."

"Come on, just one more candle—" I cut off before her gaze sawed off my arm and heaved the world-weariest sigh I could manage, then settled cross-legged on the floor. "Okay. Tell me what in the stars' darkest gleams is going on. I didn't remember wrong, did I?" I nodded at Kanri. "You were the healer. Nami was the neat trap specialist." A reluctant nod was my only confirmation. "So what changed?"

"Everything," said Kanri.

"I don't know why it was us," said Nami. "Maybe the Council thought nobody would notice if the Saru family turned up wrong, because we're so damn isolated." The candle guttered as if with her anger. "But Tei and Kobin died in the first tests, trying to switch their chakras, their jutsus. And when they'd made some modifications, they came back for Kanri and me." Her words choked her, then; she clenched both her fists until her palms bled like crushed fruit and couldn't go on.

"They still didn't have it right," Kanri took up, voice hard. "We were not supposed to also switch personalities, quirks." His hands remained perfectly still, resting on his knees, but the rest of him seemed to shake within the confines of his skin. "Not only do I dismantle traps with my chakra, I enjoy puzzles and write like a girl. Nami says _damn _and calls people by their family names."

Unlike his sister, he didn't seem to be able to stop, explanations rushing forth in sharp sentences like a wave of broken glass. I struggled to absorb it even as if it were, jagged accounts cutting into my veins. "I did what they said when they told her I died," said Kanri, bitter in that distant way that indicated he had descended into cold anger. "I am a shinobi of Sunagakure and I was _loyal_. This would help our village, I thought. But they took my family from me, and I could condone that no longer."

"And Gaara," I said. "Why do you hate Gaara? More than most people, I mean. Obviously."

"Why do you think, Izari?" Nami's cool emerald eyes—Konoha eyes, they should have been, like the depths of the leaves—threatened to cut diamonds into weapons at the thought. "Because it's all for that damn demon. He's unstable. It's driven him mad. It needs a new host, and they need to know how to transfer it."

My head felt like it had been run over by the shaved ice cart; I barely heard Kanri add, "But they have to perfect it. If his personality transfers, too, their whole purpose will be thwarted. They need to control him."

"It," said Nami, and her voice glittered with dangerous disgust.

"But," I found myself saying, fighting for some life-ring in this storm, "they can control him now. He's _better_, dammit. The Kazekage was all excited about it."

Nami shrugged. "Then stay, Izari. Risk it. But the two participants need to be close."

"Preferably blood-close," said Kanri. "And the experiment needs to know everything about the victims. They need pieces of them."

"Gaara and I aren't related," I pointed out, frantically.

"Not related," said Nami. "But sharing blood. How did you blind Gaara?"

"With my sand." And the horror struck me like a spear to the gut: with my sand, fed by years of my own blood, punching into Gaara's eyes and leaving me behind. With my sand, who brought his blood back to me, which I swept through my own open wounds and picked up pieces of _him_.

"That can't be enough to count." The words seared on the way out, coming short and fast and desperate. "Hell, _I'm_ not stable either, they've told me that, what the hell good would _I_ be. Hell hell hell dammit _hell_."

"Leave," said Nami, and I thought of the guilt on Gaara's face when he wouldn't tell me what was going on in the lab. Thought of how I'd found our hair, my blood, pictures of us together. Hissed with a pained rage when I realized that the Kazekage had given into my demands and brought me _closer_ to his gods-damned son. And it occurred to me that Gaara's presence _had_ stabilized me, mellowed me; I swore now because I was panicked, but I'd striven too damned hard to respond to his needs as well. Stopped ordering him around. Been clever with my words so I mostly didn't curse around him. Called him my _friend_.

"Leave Sunagakure," urged Nami again. "Izari. Don't let them do this to you. We were enough. Leave, dammit."

"And go _where?" _I snarled, head spinning, and leapt to my feet, sending the candle to dancing. I had broken Konoha's trust for that damn demon redhead, and nowhere else would take me. Nowhere wouldn't send me back, the caged bird caught and returned to her masters. I turned, dizzy in slow-motion, and pressed myself against the door, trying to find the handle in my blind fury.

I was going to confront him, with all the desert gods as my witness, and the part of me that wanted to stay alive was lost amid the unrelenting wave of betrayal.

-/-

When I finally stumbled out of the house, Nami and Kanri following but not trying to stop me, it was as if I hadn't. I still couldn't see, but it was no longer because of the unnatural dark that oppressed the Saru home. Instead, it was the sandstorm that whipped into my eyes, driving my vision away as if trying to set me on Gaara's path.

As suddenly as a cloudburst, my mother's words came back to me, stark and stuttering: _Caught in a sandstorm. Unnatural_. Not because I thought my father's death had been the work of Gaara, but because this sandstorm without question _was_: it was about as natural as a bicycle factory and my sand vibrated up into it, joining the familiar whipping gold. His blood was in the sand, and mine, and a hundred others', and the desert's itself.

I didn't know why, but I didn't care. My only reaction was to power up my rage even more, for his sandstorm prevented me from moving through Sunagakure's streets to challenge its creator.

Except it didn't. While Nami and her brother were pinned inside the door to their house, I found I could take steps forward, the storm sweeping around me like curious water, instead of peeling my skin away. Kanri beckoned me back, and Nami slammed the door shut when I ignored him, concentrating on moving toward the edge of the cliff.

Since I couldn't see it, I nearly fell off it before mustering the chakra to anchor me to stone while I skidded toward the ground. I came away from the cliff bloody, torn, winded like a hunting horn—but my chakra control had improved since the last time, and I could still walk when I hit the dirt.

I didn't walk. I _ran_, like the devils of the desert called me for their own, using all the knowledge of the streets I'd been sure to learn while loitering with Gaara in the village. It might've taken most people years to learn all the alleys I'd discovered, but I'd been _looking_, dammit, determined to learn the secrets of my home. And I used them now, ignoring the needles slamming through my vision, discovering that I really _could_ find my way blind, now that I'd come back.

So I was better than Gaara, curse him to the depths of the stars, and he would know it before I was chased from the village where I belonged. The village that had betrayed the loyalty I'd worked so hard to give it, and that it'd never really earned.

-/-

It wasn't that Gaara had trusted them, but he had believed them. Had given in to the bitter singing of hope in his chest and agreed to face the dangers because he _wasn't good enough_ to contain their demons any longer—and he didn't want to be. He was, perhaps, the only child in the world who was… pleased… to be _not good enough_.

He knew the risks, and he had accepted. He had given up his sight, willingly, though the demon screamed in protest and fought back, because they said he would have to make sacrifices to earn his reward. This is how they would gain their suitable new host: take the girl back so that no one wanted her, so that no one could claim her. He believed it would be worth it, to be free of the demon in the night.

His belief seemed foolish now, as he let the demon have its way with his chakra, sending sand spiraling out into oblivion, proving them wrong. They said they couldn't do it now—said they didn't need to. Because he'd become useful again, controllable.

He would not be controlled. He would show them that they should have taken the beast out of him when they had the chance, not delayed and then refused. And then, with all vestiges of guilt suppressed in the vicious glee of the Shukaku, he would kill _her_, for taking his sight after he had saved her and her village, for weakening him until he thought he needed her, until _they_ thought he needed her, and though he would not have what he wanted, neither would those who had betrayed him.


	30. Nowhere's Home

**A/N: **Oh man, guys, is it super cheesy? It's super cheesy, I know. Bahhhh oh well. _Anyway_. This here is the final chapter. **The final chapter**_**. **_So please take a moment to listen to me being super cheesy:

Like _The Obsession_, _Sand Child _will never have a sequel. This is not because I don't wish to tell you what happens next, but simply because I'm stepping out of fanfiction for now. Quite possibly forever. This… is actually super emotional for me, probably more so than it has a right to be. xD But I've gained so much from FF—from you guys. I absolutely cannot believe how far I've come. Don't believe me? Go back and read my first fanfic, then reread this one. (Only don't actually do that, because my first fanfic… -shudder- Please don't.) I just… wow. I'm sure not perfect, but I needed this. And I needed you, every single one of you who encouraged me and criticized me and helped me find the place where I am now. Ahhh I don't deserve any of you.

I'm really seriously going to miss this.

But you see, I'm pursuing writing as my actual career goal, and being obligated to my fanfics doesn't really allow that. I need to leave fanfiction behind and move on to my original writing. So the next time you hear from me (apart from replying to my reviews, of course, which I strive always to do)… I'll have published a novel. Because rest assured, if somehow this momentous miracle does occur (…I have a long way to go), no way could I fail to let my wonderful devoted readers know. (:

And in the meantime, I am more grateful to you than you can ever imagine, and I love you _all_. Enjoy the cheese!

With oodles of love,

Kit

-/-

I didn't actually know where Gaara was standing to throw this massive temper tantrum, but I assumed he hadn't left his house. So I slammed my way into the Kazekage's mansion and collapsed a moment against the doorframe, noting the raw red hue my skin had taken on beneath shredded fishnet and glove. The sand may have let me pass, but it did not do so with kitten breath in mind.

Several ninja rendered impotent by the sandstorm leapt to their feet at my arrival. I coughed dust, rubbing at my eyes until tears cut dirty swaths down my cheek, and demanded hoarsely, "Where is he?"

"The roof," said a shinobi I recognized as the one who'd tipped the hat he wasn't wearing to Soriko, back before we'd left for Konoha. I stalked past him, muttering the darkest words I knew around the grit in my throat, heading up.

I burst out onto the roof and the door banged shut behind me with a sound like the gates of hell locking into place. I followed shortly, crashing backwards into the door as the storm rescinded its unexplained mercy that had allowed me to move within its grip. It clearly could have eviscerated me in seconds, but it chose to take its time, tearing into my skin as if testing the waters. I could hardly breathe for sand in my mouth and my veins.

With difficulty, I gathered the grains of my own dust. Most had long since fled my control, dancing gaily into Gaara's storm; I dragged at the ones ground into my clothing, caught in my hair, and flung them into the wind as I began to walk. Splitting my attention between moving forward and directing my sand actually made the stuff go somewhat in the direction I wanted: not straight through the gold inferno, but sideways, spiraling inward into the course of the storm. I didn't know I was approaching Gaara until I nearly ran into him, my vision so sticky with dirt I might as well have plastered chewing gum across my eyes.

His dust-bedeviled silhouette cleared a little, with me inches from him. His usually-pale skin was veined with blue like rivers, and he seemed to be bulging with muscles in places Gaara had never bothered to acquire muscles. I squinted, trying to decipher the mutations, when my sand swerved up behind him and scraped across his face.

They didn't move deep enough to wound; this wasn't a desperate attack like the one that'd taken his eyes. It was just a reminder, a wake-up call, fueled by more emotions than just the rage I was busy paying attention to.

Unexpectedly, at the touch, Gaara stiffened. With the movement, every grain of sand that comprised the storm froze like fireflies hitting a hundred thousand windshields all at once. And then they fell, cascading over me—and the rest of the village—in a deluge that hammered me to my knees and was going to be a _hell_ of a time cleaning up.

I staggered back to my feet and glared down at Gaara, who had collapsed with his storm, and now sprawled among the miniature golden dunes that swelled over the roof of the Kazekage's mansion. I opened my mouth to excoriate him until he bled contrition—or until he killed me and we were done with this damned nonsense. But pale and worn amid the soft gritty gold, he looked too helpless, and apparently I'd grown less heartless when I wasn't looking, because instead of yelling, all that came out of my mouth was, "What did they to do you?"

He stirred, feeble as a baby bird, and the shreds of flesh that had once been eyelids flickered. "Nothing," he said, his voice so weak a spider couldn't have heard it. "That is… the problem." He started to sit up, moving as if he fought steel solidifying his veins, and then he jerked forward, empty eyes turned on me as they hadn't in so many months. Fury flickered across his blood-streaked face, fury that matched mine, and he said sharply, "I will kill you."

My aggravated state returned with a vengeance. I fisted my hands on my hips and snapped, "Wait just a minute, Red, not if I kill you _first_."

I could tell that if he'd had the energy, he would have scoffed. As it was, not even a twitch of his sand could proclaim his derision, but I knew. I scowled, calling up a handful of grains that had worked themselves free of the fallen storm. "It's not such a difficult thing now, kid, you don't have _any _chakra left. It might not even be any _fun_ to wreak my revenge. What'd you have to go and waste all that energy for?" I realized I hadn't irritated him nearly enough with my words and revised my question: "What the _hell_ did you have to go and waste all that energy for?"

He looked past me with a weary exasperation in the set of his mouth and said, "Sunagakure betrayed me."

"Like hell!" I jabbed my thumb at my forehead. "They gave _me_ this hope, all the while plotting to stuff some demon my throat. Which—dammit—would be to _your_ benefit, since they'd be ripping it out of you! Betrayed you, ha." I kicked some sand at him; it skittered across his hand in a tiny golden rain. "Betrayed _me_. So what're you complaining about?"

He looked ready to collapse back into his cushion of sand dunes and stay there. "The Council rescinded their decision. The demon… is to stay with me." A flash of some emotion touched his face, like he was determined to stay angry, no matter how drained he was. "It is _your fault." _

"Oh, so you're going to kill me after you punish them for turning on you like masters who abused their vicious dog?" The words lashed out bitterly, masking the surge of disgust I suddenly felt for not Gaara but Sunagakure. They never recognized what they had. They threw me away, then Gaara, and the disappointment struggling through his heart must have been greater than the pull of the tides. "In case you forgot," I added, trying to be smug, "I _almost_ beat you in Konoha, when you were all full of chakra, so you don't stand a chance now, redhead."

"It was a set-up," he murmured. "I was never… intended to win. We needed you."

Well that dragged all my forced smugness away like a cat with a dead rat. I had motivation only for an expression of annoyed disbelief before something thudded against the door to the roof, trying to smash it open past the piles of sand that held it in place.

My chance had nearly passed; whatever punishment Baki, the Kazekage, and his minions wreaked on the both of us, I doubted they would let me kill Gaara. I gathered my sand into a tight ring around my fist and looked down at the redhead, the host for a demon who was meant to be mine. If I killed him, I didn't know what would happen to the Shukaku, but maybe it would die, too, and I would be safe from any future whims of Sunagakure.

The door grated open two inches, and I snarled down at Gaara, giving up all pretenses. "Get up," I said, letting my sand fall in a thin stream back into its pouch. "Come on, Red, get up. We have some running to do."

He didn't seem to comprehend, so I let an exasperate sigh wrench its way from my throat and then stepped forward. I hated it—I wanted to touch him _now_ less than ever, knowing how close he'd come to watching me suffer the fate he knew firsthand—but I grabbed his arm and hauled him to his feet. He was heavy with exhausted, but at least I didn't have to drag his gourd full of sand with us, too. I struggled to the edge of the roof as the door burst in another few inches, nearly crumpled under Gaara's weight as we jumped down, and then ducked down a near-invisible alley in as close to a run as we could manage.

-/-

I really wanted to go to Nami's place, because I already knew she was on board with leaving Suna behind. But she hated Gaara, and I sure as hell wouldn't make it up that cliff lugging his chakraless form anyway. Plus Soriko was closer, and even though I was now known to be associated with her, I figured she could help.

She answered several seconds into my frantic knocking and wearing someone else's face. The disguise dissolved when she saw Gaara and I, coated in blood and near to collapse, and the questioning look she gave me didn't need any words.

"Hide us," I said, as close to begging as I would ever come.

"I think," said Soriko, "they know what I can do? If they find strangers here, will there be doubt?"

"We don't want to stay," I said. "We're going to see Nami. But we need to be invisible on the way there."

She nodded thoughtfully, then inquired, "Can I come?"

I stared at her, said, "Sure, whatever," then thought better of it. "Soriko, we're not coming back to Suna. Ever. It'll be a damned unpleasant life." And it would be, I knew sourly, hating the sick selfish feeling in my gut that wanted to think of a way to go back to being a shinobi who was—not coddled, not living _easy_, but living the proper life. It couldn't happen now.

But at least, wherever we were going, there would be no more betrayal. I would make damned sure of that.

"I know," Soriko said firmly.

"You have _no reason_ to hate Suna, do you really want—"

"Yes," she said, all trace of the questioning lilt to her voice vanished like a spider's broken web. "Saru Tei was my best friend, and I was gonna marry Saru Kobin." She said it like a child, which was all she was—all she had been when Nami's brothers had been alive. But I couldn't question her. I just nodded somberly and said, "Three's better than two."

"They'll be expecting two, right?" A film of cheer returned to her face and she spun, crouching to scribble on a piece of paper that graced the floor. "Good thing I've already done you and Gaara. And me?" she added pensively. "I know me pretty well."

A flurry of seals later, three strangers left Soriko's house: an old man limping on the arm of his rose-haired granddaughter, with a puppy trotting gaily in their wake.

-/-

The cliff still presented a problem. I could barely climb it without giving Gaara a piggyback ride; the redheaded burden would never let me get up there. Luckily, we splashed through a couple unexplained puzzles on at its base, clearly Kanri's warning system. The sky-haired Saru dropped over the edge and sped toward us, one hand on the stone, gathering velocity until he landed with a silent shudder that spoke of _unreasonable_ chakra control and years of practicing a rapid descent to minimize the inconvenience of his home.

"Soriko, I presume?"

The puppy barked enthusiastically, startling me into a wince that jolted Gaara into a reluctant grunt of pain. I didn't apologize, just nodded shortly and said, "You know how Nami said to leave? We want to leave."

Kanri eyed us with cool scrutiny, clearly taking in the weary way we walked and the drain of chakra. Then he said flatly, "You expect to escape in that shape."

"What the hell choice do we have?"

He shrugged as if this didn't actually matter, though he pivoted with an urgency that belayed the appearance. Possibly the sound of pursuing footsteps echoed to his ears and drove him on, though of course we were too far from Suna's streets for this to be possible.

"Follow," he ordered shortly, setting off along the base of the sentinel wall, hands flipping into a series of signs as he moved. "But the dog stays. We are not smuggling a loudmouthed puppy out of the village."

"Um," I said. "The puppy's Soriko."

He stopped, voice suddenly chill and sharp as a field of icicles as he asked, "Then who is the old man?"

Gaara stirred at my shoulder, but left me to defend him without help. This was possibly a mistake, because I had reason to hate him as much as anyone—and I did. But I also didn't. We were birds in a basket. Two pears in a pot. However the hell that saying went. "What hell does it matter?" I snapped. "He's coming with us, and we don't have time for this stupidity, so let's get moving."

The tension did not ease from his shoulders, but Kanri moved forward again, hands weaving the jutsu once more. "You better save his life or something later," I muttered to Gaara as we staggered after. "Or else we'll just have to deal with his grudge through all our outlaw days."

Only then I raised my voice and said, "I get it, Kanri. I lost my family because of him, too. But we all lost family because of _them_."

Kanri nodded once, tersely, but not in disagreement, and I thought he relaxed infinitesimally as he led us on.

-/-

The warrens beneath Suna's cliffs were dark and cold and everything I had never hoped to experience again. Until next winter, anyway, but hell, I hibernated during the winter. They pressed in on us like the closing maw of a giant beast, and all I could think to do to keep my mind off them was talk.

"Where's Nami?" I asked. I thought I'd been loud, but the tyrant stone muted my voice. Probably best, but it nagged at me.

"She can't come yet," answered Kanri, quiet as the wind in a meadow. He apparently still thought we could be pursued in here, though _I'd_ never known about these tunnels. From what I gathered, they were a Saru family secret: guarding them was the task of each new generation. This seemed to indicate that some of the tunnels went _up_, which was the only explanation I could think of for having a house so high in the wall. "She has to find a way to get mother out."

I snorted, but not loud enough to raise Kanri's ire. I just couldn't figure out what we were supposed to do with a half-catatonic former shinobi while running around in the desert, but what the hell. It's not like I could change their minds. And it's not like I didn't understand that he didn't want to sacrifice any more family to Sunagakure's mercy. I wondered if Soriko had any relatives she wanted to save, but she didn't volunteer the information.

"Hey," I said softly, not quite sure I wanted to say it. "Do you think we could go back to Konoha and get _my_ mother out?"

Once I'd asked, I regretted it. I couldn't take care of her; I'd never wanted to. But I was anchorless, without any family of my own—and I couldn't bear that Gaara would have lost me _everything_. Kanri just looked back at me, face grey in the dark as if covered by a veil, and said, "Of course."

Gaara shivered slightly, then said hoarsely, "Temari… Kankuro.,,"

"Um… what? Why?"

"This was never… their fault."

"They won't want to come, Red."

He paused a moment, then agreed, "No. Perhaps not. They would not… follow me."

This struck me as being unreasonably sad, like drowning children, and I refrained from comment. At last we broke out into the desert night, which provided no respite from the cold and dark of the tunnels except for the light of the stars. They spread out above us like a hundred sparkling armies; I stared up at them until my neck protested, then dropped Gaara's arm and untied the _hitai-ate_ from my head.

I gazed down at the Sunagakure symbol that I had craved for so long, even as I bore the Konohagakure one—even as I had worn the _hitai-ate_ of _two_ villages, with neither claiming me. Konoha's betrayal had not been the fault of the Hokage; she'd had no choice but to surrender me, to keep the peace between my homes, as Suna had undoubtedly planned. But that void within me ached now that I'd noticed it.

Yet it didn't hurt half as much as the place where Suna had torn out my heart like weeds. My determined loyalty had been ugly and worthless to them, a testament to my blindness. Blindness that rivaled Gaara's. And I'd been so derisive of his lack of direction. Mine was worse: my direction led me into a hole that threatened to devour me and then spit me back out like refuse.

Slowly, I drew a kunai from my holster, pressed its tip to the metal of the _hitai-ate_, and dragged a line through the symbol of Sunagakure.

"Is this how all missing-nin start out?" I asked the sky at large, tying the cloth back beneath my ponytail, which probably looked like a cat who'd been left out in the rain by now.

"Betrayed?" said Soriko, the first word I'd heard her utter since she'd barked at Kanri.

"Yeah. I dunno. With a cause."

"We have a cause?"

"Nah. I guess not. Besides family and loyalty and all that great stuff." But the idea fidgeted in my head like a nervous snake, even though I couldn't take it seriously and still retain an opinion of myself somewhere short of insane.

-/-

We had to leave the desert for a while, or it would've been all too easy for Suna to catch us again. We traveled to places that never could have rivaled the Land of Wind for beauty, keeping our heads down and trying to get along. I guess I came pretty close to killing Gaara again (or making the attempt, anyway), and so did Kanri, but not as close as Gaara came to killing both of us. Nami joined us after a while, followed by her navy-haired mother who blinked too much and always seemed vaguely on the edge of dropping back into sleep. The expressions that set the Saru family's faces to glowing at the reunion reawakened the desire to plan the retrieval of my mother, too, though plans and me got on like mongooses and serpents. But it was still too soon; they hadn't stopped looking for us.

When we passed by Amegakure again, I detoured to see the desert. I didn't dare step out into the open, but I stared out to where the grass turned to rolling gold and wish for that dry heat against my skin, yellow grit instead of mud. Gaara followed me, and his sand roiled at his feet as if yearning to rejoin its kin.

"Your dad thought you were in love with me," I said casually, as if this is something normal people bring up in conversation. Hint: it sure as heck isn't.

Gaara frowned slightly, then said, "No."

"That's flattering."

"I… can't."

"No. I get it." I titled my head back and examined what I could see of the sky. It didn't match the desert's for blue, though they weren't so very distant from each other. "It's hard stuff, huh?"

He said nothing, which made sense, because he didn't need to argue or agree. Loving people was damn hard, and I thought I hadn't done enough of it in my short and bitter existence. "We should go back," I said suddenly. A startled flinch took ahold of his sand, but I pressed on, grinning. "No, this is a great idea. Listen, we raise an army of the bitter and betrayed, then go back to Suna, overthrow its moron government, and _you_," I finished triumphantly, trying and failing to hold back my laughter, "take over as Kazekage from your moronic father. It's perfect."

This turned out to be one of the rare occasions where Gaara once again offered me a blank-bandage stare. I was struck by a sudden urge, but resisted it as he said slowly and incredulously, "You believe that _you_—and _I_—have the… charisma… to raise an army?"

I snickered, choked on the sound, and coughed embarrassingly for a minute. "No," I said when I'd recovered, then chortled again. More carefully this time. "But Soriko could."

His expression sent me into another tide of laughter. "Nah, I'm kidding," I said, breathless as a deflating hot air balloon as the mirth drifted away. And then I succumbed to the random impulse and reached out. First I touched his face, feather-light, so he knew what I was doing, and then I untangled the bandages from his eyes.

The sight of the scarred flesh drove a spike through my chest, as usual, but I forced myself not to look away, gag, or run screaming in guilty terror. No matter how many times I changed his bandages, this was still a challenge, but somehow, I managed. The demon hardly ever ripped its way into his vision anymore; the cloth was not so much precaution as a crutch, so that I didn't have to look at what I'd done.

To my surprise, the kind that turned my jaw into an anvil, Gaara said quietly, "I am sorry."

I dropped the bandages on the ground and fidgeted with the mask from Eiji that I still wore on my belt. "Damn, kid. I mean, darn. You don't—" I shrugged futilely, kicking mud over the cloth white as roses, then said abruptly, "Hey, we should switch names."

His expression clearly demanded to know how many more dumb-as-cows ideas I was going to come up with today, but he only said, "What?"

"Okay, that's another stupid one. But all the same…" I snorted. "Sunako. 'Sand child'? I mean, how obvious can you get? My mother, let me tell you." I paused, staring out into the distant bright desert, and said, "I'm not Suna's child anymore."

"And I?"

"Well… Gaara. The demon loving only itself, right?"

"…Yes."

"Well, we can't have that."

I turned away from the seductive sun, turned my back on the desert. "Okay. New deal. We give each other new names. You can be… Akage."

I looked back just in time to see his expression, vexed as a fox faced with a stream too wide to cross, and grinned. "Yeah, I know. Okay, your turn. What's my new name?"

He hesitated, giving it way more consideration than I had. I felt a moment's contriteness for being as flippant with his name as with pancakes, but damn, it's not like it didn't fit him. Finally, after keeping me suspended over a cliff with genuine curiosity, he said, "Hiikime."

I tried it on, then determinedly met his empty gaze, though he wouldn't know it. I refused to let my sight stray past him to the desert again. "Sure. Thanks, Red."

We headed back to the camp, walking in step, Gaara's—Akage's, haha—movements far from graceful but without needing my help to find his way. Before we reached the others, his quiet question brushed the air like the fletching of an arrow on its way by.

"Why?"

I didn't know which part he meant, and afraid to ask, I simply pretended he referred to the naming business. "Because that's who we _used_ to be. And I'm starting to hate—" I hesitated. "—the past. So isn't it better to forget it?"

"…No."

I sighed. "You're probably right, darn it. But I'm going to try anyway. Start over. With you. And them." I nodded ahead, to where the remains of the Saru family and Soriko waited, then scowled a little as I realized I was going to finish with, "But I guess mostly with you."

-/-

When the dry winds of the desert whispered back toward them through their cover, the hot gusts still spoke of hell to him, though he knew she would never consider them as such. But they were a hell he had escaped, a hurricane-fury of bloodlust and betrayal that he didn't have to go back to—even if he were to take her seriously and fight for Suna. If he did return, then, it would be to remake the place: to convert hell into an oasis where he could breathe. He did not want to, but he found that he would, if she came upon the way—the will—to do so.

Her. Hiikime, now, by his design. No longer the little girl who'd approached him in a desolate land—but still the girl with her hand outstretched, whether she intended it or not. He'd trailed her in and out of the desert, the blind man following the girl who couldn't see.

He didn't want to forget, though the past haunted him as those winds, because then he might not remember the opening of their eyes.


End file.
